"Oh! povero! Apropos, thanks for your kindness to Julia. How did she behave to you?"
"Why—well enough," said Lucan—"a little peculiar, as usual."
"Oh! peculiar of course!"
He smiled rather sadly, took Monsieur de Lucan's arm, and leading him through the meandering paths of the garden:
"Voyons, mon cher," he said in a suppressed voice, "between you and me, what is Julia?"
"How, my friend?"
"Yes, what sort of a woman is my wife? If you know, do tell me, I beg of you."
"Excuse me, but it is the very question I would like to ask of you myself."
"Of me?" said the count. "But I have not the slightest idea. She is a Sphinx, a riddle, the solution of which escapes me completely. She both charms and frightens me. She is peculiar, you said? She is more than that; she is fantastic. She is not of this world. I know not whom or what I have married. You remember that cold and beautiful creature in the Arabian tales who rose at night to go and feast in the graveyard. It's absurd, but she reminds me of that."
The count's troubled look, the constrained laugh with which he accompanied his words, moved Lucan deeply.