panier and those smiling deities on lacquer. How could the Duc leave such frivolities to so serious a person? What is her doubled rose-leaf amidst all her good luck? She must have one. I suppose it is you? Well, you will find me at home in an hour. I am only a stone's throw from your hotel. Have you brought all the homespun virtues with you from Hohenszalras? I am afraid they will wither in the air of the boulevards. Au revoir!'
And then she had laughed again and kissed her finger-tips to him, and driven away wrapped up in her shining furs, and he was conscious of a stinging sense of excitement, annoyance, pleasure, and confusion, as if he had drunk some irritant and heady wine.
He had gone on to his clubs with an uneasy sense of something perilous and distasteful having come into his life, yet also with a consciousness of a certain zest added to the seductions of this his favourite city. He did not go to the Hôtel Brancka in the next hour, and was sensible of having to exercise a certain control over himself to refrain from doing so.
'Did you know that Olga was in Paris?' she said, in some surprise, to him when they met in the evening.
'I believe she arrived this morning,' he
