“I only wanted to smoke a cigar.  I am coming in now.”

“Then good-night, my friend.”

“Good-night, Countess.”

She retired as far as her low chair, sat down in it and wept; and her maid, who was called to assist her to bed, seeing her red eyes said with compassion: 

“Ah, Madame is going to make a sad face for herself again to-morrow.”

The Countess slept badly; she was feverish and had nightmare.  As soon as she awoke she opened her window and her curtains to look at herself in the mirror.  Her features were drawn, her eyelids swollen, her skin looked yellow; and she felt such violent grief because of this that she wished to say she was ill and to keep her bed, so that she need not appear until evening.

Then, suddenly, the necessity to go away entered her mind, to depart immediately, by the first train, to quit the country, where one could see too clearly by the broad light of the fields the ineffaceable marks of sorrow and of life itself.  In Paris one lives in the half shadow of apartments, where heavy curtains, even at noontime, admit only a softened light.  She would herself become beautiful again there, with the pallor one should have in that discreetly softened light.  Then Annette’s face rose before her eyes—­so fresh and pink, with slightly disheveled hair, as when she was playing tennis.  She understood then the unknown anxiety from which her soul had suffered.  She was not jealous of her daughter’s beauty!  No, certainly not; but she felt, she acknowledged for the first time that she must never again show herself by Annette’s side in the bright sunlight.

She rang, and before drinking her tea she gave orders for departure, wrote some telegrams, even ordering her dinner for that evening by telegraph, settled her bills in the country, gave her final instructions, arranged everything in less than an hour, a prey to feverish and increasing impatience.

When she went down stairs, Annette and Olivier, who had been told of her decision, questioned her with surprise.  Then, seeing that she would not give any precise reason for this sudden departure, they grumbled a little and expressed their dissatisfaction until they separated at the station in Paris.

The Countess, holding out her hand to the painter, said:  “Will you dine with us to-morrow?”

“Certainly, I will come,” he replied, rather sulkily.  “All the same, what you have done was not nice.  We were so happy down there, all three of us.”

CHAPTER III

A DANGEROUS WARNING

As soon as the Countess was alone with her daughter in her carriage, which was taking her back to her home, she suddenly felt tranquil and quieted, as if she had just passed through a serious crisis.  She breathed easier, smiled at the houses, recognized with joy the look of the city, whose details all true Parisians seem to carry in their eyes and hearts.  Each shop she passed suggested the ones beyond, on a line along the Boulevard, and the tradesman’s face so often seen behind his show-case.  She felt saved.  From what?  Reassured.  Why?  Confident.  Of what?