"Well! we will sup at the studio," she replied nervously. "We will discuss the morality of art."
She had now attained her end. She realized that anything she might add would cool the impression already made on the duke. She wished to leave him under the intoxication of that kiss.
"Let us go!" said Kayser, drawing himself up in an ill-humored way. "Since you wish it—what a funny idea!—Ramel," he said, extending his hand to the old journalist, "if your feelings prompt you, I should like to show you some canvases."
"I go out so rarely," said Ramel.
"Huron!" said the painter.
"Puritan!" said Marianne, also offering her hand to Denis Ramel.
Rosas looked after her and saw her disappear amongst the guests in the other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers; and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little Japanese salon was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in the same terms as Lissac. Is human nature at the bottom merely commonplace, that two men of entirely different characters make almost identical confessions?" While she was recalling that passionate moment, the duke was experiencing a feeling of disappointment because of their interrupted conversation, and he reproached himself for not having followed Marianne, for having allowed her to escape without telling her—
But what had he to tell her?
He had said everything. He had entirely surrendered, had opened his soul, as transparent as crystal. And this notwithstanding that he had vowed in past days that he would keep his secret locked within him. He had smothered his love under his frigid Castilian demeanor. And now, suddenly, like a child, on the first chance meeting with that woman, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a confession that he had been rigidly withholding!
Ah! it was because he loved her, and had always loved her. There was only one woman in the whole world for him,—this one. He did not lie. Marianne's smile haunted him, wherever he was. In her glance was a poison that he had drunk, which set his blood on fire. He was hers. Except for the image of Lissac, he would most certainly have returned long since to Paris to seek Mademoiselle Kayser.