He drew off the rings one by one, and as the wedding-ring fell in its turn, he murmured smilingly: 

“The law!  Let us salute it!”

“Nonsense!” said the Countess, slightly wounded.

Bertin had always been inclined to satirical banter, that tendency of the French to mingle irony with the most serious sentiments, and he had often unintentionally made her sad, without knowing how to understand the subtle distinctions of women, or to discern the border of sacred ground, as he himself said.  Above all things it vexed her whenever he alluded with a touch of familiar lightness to their attachment, which was an affair of such long standing that he declared it the most beautiful example of love in the nineteenth century.  After a silence, she inquired: 

“Will you take Annette and me to the varnishing-day reception?”

“Certainly.”

Then she asked him about the best pictures to be shown in the next exposition, which was to open in a fortnight.

Suddenly, however, she appeared to recollect something she had forgotten.

“Come, give me my shoe,” she said.  “I am going now.”

He was playing dreamily with the light shoe, turning it over abstractedly in his hands.  He leaned over, kissed the foot, which appeared to float between the skirt and the rug, and which, a little chilled by the air, no longer moved restlessly about; then he slipped on the shoe, and Madame de Guilleroy, rising, approached the table, on which were scattered papers, open letters, old and recent, beside a painter’s inkstand, in which the ink had dried.  She looked at it all with curiosity, touched the papers, and lifted them to look underneath.

Bertin approached her, saying: 

“You will disarrange my disorder.”

Without replying to this, she inquired: 

“Who is the gentleman that wishes to buy your Baigneuses?”

“An American whom I do not know.”

“Have you come to an agreement about the Chanteuse des rues?”

“Yes.  Ten thousand.”

“You did well.  It was pretty, but not exceptional.  Good-by, dear.”

She presented her cheek, which he brushed with a calm kiss; then she disappeared through the portieres, saying in an undertone: 

“Friday—­eight o’clock.  I do not wish you to go with me to the door—­you know that very well.  Good-by!”

When she had gone he first lighted another cigarette, then he began to pace slowly to and fro in his studio.  All the past of this liaison unrolled itself before him.  He recalled all its details, now long remote, sought them and put them together, interested in this solitary pursuit of reminiscences.

It was at the moment when he had just risen like a star on the horizon of artistic Paris, when the painters were monopolizing the favor of the public, and had built up a quarter with magnificent dwellings, earned by a few strokes of the brush.