"But why make me beautiful, Camille, when I do not expect anybody?"
"Has madame said that she was not at home?"
"No; but you remind me that I do not wish to receive any visitors."
Camille looked at her mistress in surprise. She did not understand, she thought it was an attack of the vapors, and began to arrange her, as the phrase went in those days, afraid to break the silence. Julie, depressed and distraught, allowed herself to be dressed. And when her maid had retired, carrying away the gray dresses which became her property, she looked at herself from head to foot in a long mirror. She was fascinatingly dressed, and as lovely as an angel. That is why, as her heart continued to ask: What is the use? she hid her face in her hands and began to cry like a child.
[V]
If Julien had been a libertine, he could have adopted no better plan to arouse Madame d'Estrelle's passion. The days succeeded one another, and no chance brought them face to face for an instant. And yet Julie, whether from excess of confidence or from heedlessness, lived much more in her garden than in her salon, and preferred a solitary stroll among the shrubbery to the conversation of her intimate friends. There were evenings when she denied herself to callers on the pretext of indisposition or weariness, but on those evenings she dressed none the less carefully, as if she expected some unusual visit; then she would go to the further end of the garden, hurry back in alarm at the faintest sound, then return to see what had frightened her, and fall into a sort of panic-stricken revery when she found that everything was quiet and that she was really alone.
One day she received a declaration of love, in well-turned language, without a signature and without a private seal. She was deeply offended at it, thinking that Julien had broken all his promises to her, and saying to herself that it deserved no other treatment than cold disdain. On the following day she discovered that this effusion came from the brother of one of her friends, and her first impulse was one of joy. No, of course Julien would not have written in such terms; Julien would not have written at all! The letter, which, in the confusion of uncertainty, had seemed to her not lacking in delicacy, now seemed to be in the worst possible taste; she tossed it scornfully into the fire. But what if Julien had written! Doubtless he knew how to write as well as talk. And why did he not write?
Julie had no sooner given way to this inward weakness than she was bitterly ashamed of it.
"Of what use are my strength and my common sense," she said, "when my heart rushes outside of me thus, to grasp an affection which eludes me? Upon my word, it is only the indifference with which I am regarded which preserves me, and yet the shame of that thought does not cure me. Am I guided by a spirit of contradiction? It seemed to me at first that any advance on that young man's part would have disgusted me and that I should have repelled him proudly; and lo and behold! his resignation irritates me, his silence distresses me, and I am angry with him for thinking no more of me! Evidently my mind is badly diseased."
One day when she was at her perfumer's, she met Julien going out. He had no right to bow to her in public, and he pretended not to see her. She found on the counter a very pretty fan which he had painted for his mother, and had just brought to the shop to be made up. She imagined that it was intended for her, and made up her mind to refuse it; however, she awaited the little gift with intense impatience.