Marianne Kayser was superstitious. She believed that in the case of compromised affairs, salvation appeared at the supreme moment of playing the very last stake. She had always rebounded, for her part,—like a rubber-ball, she said—at the moment that she found herself overthrown, and more than half conquered. Fate had given some cause for her superstitious ideas. She thought herself lost, and was weary of searching, of living, in fact, when suddenly Monsieur de Rosas reached Paris from the other end of the world. That was salvation.
The duke did not prove very difficult to ensnare. He had yielded like a child in Sabine's boudoir. Marianne left that soirée with unbounded delight. She had recovered all her hopes and regained her luck. The next day she would again see Rosas. She passed the night in dreams. Light and gold reigned upon her life. She was radiant on awaking.
Her uncle, on seeing her, found her looking younger and superb.
"You are as beautiful as a Correggio, who though a voluptuous painter, must have been talented. You ought to pose to me for a Saint Cecilia. It would be magnificent, with a nimbus—"
"Oh! let your saint come later," said Marianne, "I haven't time."
Simon Kayser did not ask the young woman, moreover, why "she had not time." Marianne was perfectly free. Each managed his affairs in his own way. Such, in fact, was one of the favorite axioms of this painter, a man of principle.
Marianne breakfasted quickly and early, and after dressing herself, during which she studied coquettish effects while standing before her mirror, she left the house, jumped into a cab and drove to the Hôtel Continental. With proud mien and tossing her head, she asked for the duke as if he belonged to her. She was almost inclined to exclaim before all the people: "I am his mistress!"
But she suddenly turned pale upon hearing that Monsieur de Rosas had left.
"What! gone?"
Gone thus, suddenly, unceremoniously, without notice, without a word? It was not possible.