She recovered, by an effort that swelled her heart, strength to show nothing of the feeling of indignant rebellion that was stifling her.
She closed her eyes.
Marianne Kayser passed onward, losing herself with Simon and De Rosas in the human furrow that opened before her and immediately closed upon her, and followed by a murmur of admiration.
Adrienne had not however seen the pale, insolent countenance of the young woman so closely approach her suffering and disconsolate face. Above all, she had not seen the jealous, rapid glance that flashed unconsciously in Vaudrey's eyes when he saw José de Rosas triumphantly following the imperious Marianne. Ah! that look of sorrowful anger would have penetrated like a red-hot iron into Adrienne's soul. That glance that Guy caught a glimpse of told eloquently of wounded love and bruised vanity on the part of that man who, placed here between these two women, his mistress and the other, suffered less from the sorrow caused to Adrienne than from Marianne's treason in deserting him for this Spaniard.
Lissac was exasperated. He felt prompted to rush between Marianne and Rosas and say to him:
"You are mad to accompany this woman! Mad and ridiculous! She is deceiving you as she has deceived Vaudrey, as she has deceived me, and as she will deceive everybody."
He purposely placed himself in Mademoiselle Kayser's way. She had appeared scarcely to recognize him and had brushed against him without apparent emotion, but with a disdainful pout. Her arm had sought that of Rosas, as if she now were sure of her duke.
Guy too, felt that he could not cause a scene at the ball, for this would have brought a scandal on Vaudrey. He had just before repeated to Adrienne: "Courage." This was now his own watchword, and yet he sought out Jouvenet to whisper to the Prefect of Police what he thought of his conduct. Jouvenet had come and gone. Granet, as if he had divined Lissac's preoccupation, looked at him sneeringly as he whispered to the fat Molina who was seated near him:
"Alkibiades!"
The soirée, moreover, was terribly wearisome to Lissac. He wandered from group to group to find some one with whom to exchange ideas but he hardly found anyone besides Denis Ramel. The same political commonplaces retailed everywhere, at Madame Gerson's or at Madame Marsy's, as in the corridors of the Chamber, were re-decocted and reproduced in the corners of the salon of the Ministry, and around the besieged buffet attacked by the most ferocious gluttony. Interpellation, Majority, New Cabinet, Homogeneous, Ministry of the Elections, Ballot, One Man Ballot. Guy went, weary of the conflict, to the room in which the concert was given and listened to some operatic piece, or watched between the heads, the hidden profile of some female singer or an actor and heard the bursts of laughter that greeted the new monologue The Telephone, rendered in a clear voice with the coolness of an English clown, by a gentleman in a dress coat: See! I am Monsieur Durand—you know, Durand—of Meaux?—Exactly—A woman deceives me—How did I learn it?—By the telephone. My friend Durand—Durand—of Etampes—We are not related—Emile Durand said to me: Durand, why haven't you a telephone?—It is true, I hadn't one—Durand—the other Durand—Durand—of Etampes—has one—Then—And Lissac, somewhat listless, left this corner of the salon and stumbled against a group of men who surrounded an old gentleman much decorated, wearing the grand cordon rouge crosswise, a yellow ribbon at his neck, who, with the gravity of an English statesman, said, thrusting his tongue slightly forward to secure his false teeth from falling: