Duroy sat down immediately. He waited a long time. Then a door opened, and Madame de Marelle hastened in, wearing a Japanese morning gown of rose-colored silk embroidered with yellow landscapes, blue flowers, and white birds.
“Fancy! I was still in bed!” she exclaimed. “How good of you to come and see me! I had made up my mind that you had forgotten me.”
She held out both her hands with a delighted air, and Duroy, whom the commonplace appearance of the room had put at his ease, kissed one, as he had seen Norbert de Varenne do.
She begged him to sit down, and then scanning him from head to foot, said: “How you have altered! You have improved in looks. Paris has done you good. Come, tell me the news.”
And they began to gossip at once, as if they had been old acquaintances, feeling an instantaneous familiarity spring up between them; feeling one of those mutual currents of confidence, intimacy, and affection, which, in five minutes, make two beings of the same breed and character good friends.
Suddenly, Madame de Marelle exclaimed in astonishment: “It is funny how I get on with you. It seems to me as though I had known you for ten years. We shall become good friends, no doubt. Would you like it?”
He answered: “Certainly,” with a smile which said still more.
He thought her very tempting in her soft and bright-hued gown, less refined and delicate than the other in her white one, but more exciting and spicy. When he was beside Madame Forestier, with her continual and gracious smile which attracted and checked at the same time; which seemed to say: “You please me,” and also “Take care,” and of which the real meaning was never clear, he felt above all the wish to lie down at her feet, or to kiss the lace bordering of her bodice, and slowly inhale the warm and perfumed atmosphere that must issue from it. With Madame de Marelle he felt within him a more definite, a more brutal desire—a desire that made his fingers quiver in presence of the rounded outlines of the light silk.
She went on talking, scattering in each phrase that ready wit of which she had acquired the habit just as a workman acquires the knack needed to accomplish a task reputed difficult, and at which other folk are astonished. He listened, thinking: “All this is worth remembering. A man could write charming articles of Paris gossip by getting her to chat over the events of the day.”
Someone tapped softly, very softly, at the door by which she had entered, and she called out: “You can come in, pet.”
Her little girl made her appearance, walked straight up to Duroy, and held out her hand to him. The astonished mother murmured: “But this is a complete conquest. I no longer recognize her.”
The young fellow, having kissed the child, made her sit down beside him, and with a serious manner asked her pleasant questions as to what she had been doing since they last met. She replied, in her little flute-like voice, with her grave and grown-up air.
The clock struck three, and the journalist arose.
“Come often,” said Madame de Marelle, “and we will chat as we have done today; it will always give me pleasure. But how is it one no longer sees you at the Forestiers?” He replied: “Oh! for no reason. I have been very busy. I hope to meet you there again one of these days.”
He went out, his heart full of hope, though without knowing why.
He did not speak to Forestier of this visit. But he retained the recollection of it the following days, and more than the recollection—a sensation of the unreal yet persistent presence of this woman. It seemed to him that he had carried away something of her, the reflection of her form in his eyes, and the smack of her moral self in his heart. He remained under the haunted influence of her image, as it happens sometimes when we have passed pleasant hours with someone.
He paid a second visit a few days later.
The maid ushered him into the drawing-room, and Laurine at once appeared. She held out no longer her hand, but her forehead, and said: “Mamma has told me to request you to wait for her. She will be a quarter-of-an-hour, because she is not dressed yet. I will keep you company.”
Duroy, who was amused by the ceremonious manners of the little girl, replied: “Certainly, Mademoiselle. I shall be delighted to pass a quarter-of-an-hour with you, but I warn you that for my part I am not at all serious, and that I play all day long, so I suggest a game at touch.”
The girl was astonished; then she smiled as a woman would have done at this idea, which shocked her a little as well as astonished her, and murmured: “Rooms are not meant to be played in.”
He said: “It is all the same to me. I play everywhere. Come, catch me.”
And he began to go round the table, exciting her to pursue him, while she came after him, smiling with a species of polite condescension, and sometimes extending her hand to touch him, but without ever giving way so far as to run. He stopped, stooped down, and when she drew near with her little hesitating steps, sprung up in the air like a jack-in-the-box, and then bounded with a single stride to the other end of the dining-room. She thought it funny, ended by laughing, and becoming aroused, began to trot after him, giving little gleeful yet timid cries when she thought
