"Why do you return that woman's salutation?" he at once asked Marianne.
"I need her. She has done me services."
"That is surprising! I thought her incapable of doing anything but harm."
He did not dream of Mademoiselle Kayser's coming in contact with courtesans. In the tiny, virtuous room in Rue Cuvier, Rosas thought that Marianne was in her true surroundings. She would frequently sit at the piano—one of the few pieces of furniture contained in this apartment,—and play for Rosas Oriental melodies that would transport him far away in thought, to the open desert, by the slow lulling of David's Caravane, then abruptly change to that familiar air, that rondeau of the Variétés that he hummed yonder, on his dunghill, forsaken—
"Voyez-vous, là-bas,
Cette maison blanche—"
"I love that music-hall air!" she said.
He now no longer meditated resuming travel, or quitting Paris. Mademoiselle Kayser's hold on him grew more certain every day. The suspicion of odd mystery that enveloped this girl intensified his passion.
He sometimes asked her what her uncle was doing.
"He? Why, he has obtained, thanks to Monsieur Vaudrey, the decoration of a hydropathic establishment, Les Thermes des Batignolles. He has commenced the cartoon for a fresco: Massage Moralizing the People. We shall see that in his studio."
"Do you know," Marianne continued, "what I would like to see?"