“I have just returned from the country,” he explained.

All those men, except Musadieu, the landscape painter, professed a profound contempt for the fields.  Rocdiane and Landa, to be sure, went hunting there, but among plains or woods they only enjoyed the pleasure of seeing pheasants, quail, or partridges falling like handfuls of feathers under their bullets, or little rabbits riddled with shot, turning somersaults like clowns, going heels over head four or five times, showing their white bellies and tails at every bound.  Except for these sports of autumn and winter, they thought the country a bore.  As Rocdiane would say:  “I prefer little women to little peas!”

The dinner was lively and jovial as usual, animated by discussions wherein nothing unforeseen occurs.  Bertin, to arouse himself, talked a great deal.  They found him amusing, but as soon as he had had coffee, and a sixty-point game of billiards with the banker Liverdy, he went out, rambling from the Madeleine to the Rue Taitbout; after passing three times before the Vaudeville, he asked himself whether he should enter; almost called a cab to take him to the Hippodrome; changed his mind and turned toward the Nouveau Cirque, then made an abrupt half turn, without motive, design, or pretext, went up the Boulevard Malesherbes, and walked more slowly as he approached the dwelling of the Comtesse de Guilleroy.  “Perhaps she will think it strange to see me again this evening,” he thought.  But he reassured himself in reflecting that there was nothing astonishing in his coming a second time to inquire how she felt.

She was alone with Annette, in the little back drawing-room, and was still working on her coverlets for the poor.

She said simply, on seeing him enter:  “Ah, is it you, my friend?”

“Yes, I felt anxious; I wished to see you.  How are you?”

“Thank you, very well.”

She paused a moment, then added, significantly: 

“And you?”

He began to laugh unconcernedly, as he replied:  “Oh.  I am very well, very well.  Your fears were entirely without foundation.”

She raised her eyes, pausing in her work, and fixed her gaze upon him, a gaze full of doubt and entreaty.

“It is true,” said he.

“So much the better,” she replied, with a smile that was slightly forced.

He sat down, and for the first time in that house he was seized with irresistible uneasiness, a sort of paralysis of ideas, still greater than that which had seized him that day as he sat before his canvas.

“You may go on, my child; it will not annoy him,” said the Countess to her daughter.

“What was she doing?”

“She was studying a fantaisie.”

Annette rose to go to the piano.  He followed her with his eyes, unconsciously, as he always did, finding her pretty.  Then he felt the mother’s eye upon him, and turned his head abruptly, as if he were seeking something in the shadowy corner of the drawing-room.