He drew off the rings one by one, and as the wedding-ring fell in its turn, he murmured smilingly:
“The law! Let us salute it!”
“Nonsense!” said the Countess, slightly wounded.
Bertin had always been inclined to satirical banter, that tendency of the French to mingle irony with the most serious sentiments, and he had often unintentionally made her sad, without knowing how to understand the subtle distinctions of women, or to discern the border of sacred ground, as he himself said. Above all things it vexed her whenever he alluded with a touch of familiar lightness to their attachment, which was an affair of such long standing that he declared it the most beautiful example of love in the nineteenth century. After a silence, she inquired:
“Will you take Annette and me to the varnishing-day reception?”
“Certainly.”
Then she asked him about the best pictures to be shown in the next exposition, which was to open in a fortnight.
Suddenly, however, she appeared to recollect something she had forgotten.
“Come, give me my shoe,” she said. “I am going now.”
He was playing dreamily with the light shoe, turning it over abstractedly in his hands. He leaned over, kissed the foot, which appeared to float between the skirt and the rug, and which, a little chilled by the air, no longer moved restlessly about; then he slipped on the shoe, and Madame de Guilleroy, rising, approached the table, on which were scattered papers, open letters, old and recent, beside a painter's inkstand, in which the ink had dried. She looked at it all with curiosity, touched the papers, and lifted them to look underneath.