She closed her eyes, leaned toward him and pressed against him, lifted her cheek to him, and as he pressed his lips upon it, she murmured in his ear:  “I love thee!”

Then Olivier, without dropping the hands he clasped in his own, looked at her, saying:  “Let us see that sad face.”

She felt ready to faint.

“Yes, a little pale,” said he, “but that is nothing.”

To thank him for saying that, she said brokenly,

“Ah, dear friend, dear friend!” finding nothing else to say.

But he turned, looking behind her in search of Annette, who had disappeared.

“Is it not strange,” he said abruptly, “to see your daughter in mourning?”

“Why?” inquired the Countess.

“What?  You ask why?” he exclaimed, with extraordinary animation.  “Why, it is your own portrait painted by me—­it is my portrait.  It is yourself, such as you were when I met you long ago when I entered the Duchess’s house!  Ah, do you remember that door where you passed under my gaze, as a frigate passes under a cannon of a fort?  Good heavens! when I saw the little one, just now, at the railway station, standing on the platform, all in black, with the sun shining on her hair massed around her face, the blood rushed to my head.  I thought I should weep.  I tell you, it is enough to drive one mad, when one has known you as I have, who has studied you as no one else has, and reproduced you in painting, Madame.  Ah, I thought that you had sent her alone to meet me at the station in order to give me that surprise.  My God! but I was surprised, indeed!  I tell you, it is enough to drive one mad.”

He called:  “Annette!  Nane!”

The young girl’s voice replied from outside, where she was giving sugar to the horses: 

“Yes, yes, I am here!”

“Come in here!”

She entered quickly.

“Here, stand close beside your mother.”

She obeyed, and he compared the two, but repeated mechanically, “Yes, it is astonishing, astonishing!” for they resembled each other less when side by side than they did before leaving Paris, the young girl having acquired a new expression of luminous youth in her black attire, while the mother had for a long time lost that radiance of hair and complexion that had dazzled and entranced the painter when they met for the first time.

Then the Countess and Olivier entered the drawing-room.  He seemed in high spirits.

“Ah, what a good plan it was to come here!” he said.  “But it was your husband’s idea that I should come, you know.  He charged me to take you back with me.  And I—­do you know what I propose?  You have no idea, have you?  Well, I propose, on the contrary, to remain here!  Paris is odious in this heat, while the country is delicious.  Heavens! how sweet it is here!”