It was late when he retired, charmed, however, with this evening, and murmuring, “I believe that that affair is a certainty.”

CHAPTER III

A FLAME REKINDLED

“When will you come, my friend?  I have not seen you for three days, and that seems a long time to me.  My daughter occupies much of my time, but you know that I can no longer do without you.”

The painter, who was drawing sketches, ever seeking a new subject re-read the Countess’s note, then, opening the drawer of a writing-desk, he deposited it on a heap of other letters, which had been accumulating there since the beginning of their love-affair.

Thanks to the opportunities given them by the customs of fashionable society, they had grown used to seeing each other almost every day.  Now and then she visited him, and sat for an hour or two in the armchair in which she had posed, while he worked.  But, as she had some fear of the criticisms of the servants, she preferred to receive him at her own house, or to meet him elsewhere, for that daily interview, that small change of love.

These meetings would be agreed upon beforehand, and always seemed perfectly natural to M. de Guilleroy.

Twice a week at least the painter dined at the Countess’s house, with a few friends; on Monday nights he visited her in her box at the Opera; then they would agree upon a meeting at such or such a house, to which chance led them at the same hour.  He knew the evenings that she did not go out, and would call then to have a cup of tea with her, feeling himself very much at home even near the folds of her robe, so tenderly and so surely settled in that ripe affection, so fixed in the habit of finding her somewhere, of passing some time by her side, or exchanging a few words with her and of mingling a few thoughts, that he felt, although the glow of his passion had long since faded, an incessant need of seeing her.

The desire for family life, for a full and animated household, for the family table, for those evenings when one talks without fatigue with old friends, that desire for contact, for familiarity, for human intercourse, which dwells dormant in every human heart, and which every old bachelor carries from door to door to his friends, where he installs something of himself, added a strain of egoism to his sentiments of affection.  In that house, where he was loved and spoiled, where he found everything, he could still rest and nurse his solitude.

For three days he had not seen his friends, who must be very much occupied by the return of the daughter of the house; and he was already feeling bored, and even a little offended because they had not sent for him sooner, but not wishing, as a matter of discretion, to be the first to make an approach.

The Countess’s letter aroused him like the stroke of a whip.  It was three o’clock in the afternoon.  He decided to go immediately to her house, that he might find her before she went out.