She was entering then her forty-first year. With the six preceding years she had bidden a sullen farewell to the last of her youth and in this cruel martyrdom had watched day by day the imperceptible fading of her bloom, the dulling of her eyes until, doomed to impotently witness the fragrance and the warmth evaporate, she had come rebelling into middle age, having been beautiful, coquette, and pleasure-loving for nothing. What gave a mysterious horror to this period was the utter impossibility, when she sought back, to perceive even the traces of the journey.
At the beginning of the seventh year she awoke and shaking off all restraint began desperately to anticipate the arrival of her fortune. Bofinger, after a first resistance, seeing her resolved, advanced her the sums she required, surprising her by his generosity and good humor. At thirty-four she had looked upon forty as irrevocable. Now she said to herself that she had yet two years into which to crowd all the defeated longings of her youth. She flung madly into the vanities of luxury. She dismissed her maid of all work and installed a cook and waitress. She made a bundle, so to speak, of all her furnishings; replacing the carpets with oriental rugs, introducing into the dining-room a magnificent sideboard spread with silver. As for the parlor and bedroom, within six months they retained not an object of those treasures which had once seemed to her so luxurious and whose purchase had cost Fargus such pangs.
Each afternoon in a landau, which she rented by the month, prepared by her coiffeur, perceptibly rouged, a little puffy but always noticeable, she rolled away languidly to mingle in the parade of the avenue. In the evenings she lived from theater to theater.
Paradise, to this woman, was to be admired, envied, and coveted. She loved but two ideas, herself and the world. Her feminine nature had never sought the tribute of the individual—the woman who does that returns her love—but the admiration of the mass; an emotion entirely selfish and egoistical. In her appetite for admiration she made no discriminations, the meanest glances had the power of rendering her supremely happy. So each day, as she whirled along up Fifth Avenue and through the Park, she watched anxiously from the corners of her eye, counting the looks that followed her; thoughtful and pained when an old beau, who recognized her artifices, showed her to a friend with a knowing laugh, delighted when a young man, attracted by the mystery of woman's maturity, ogled her with supreme daring.
One consideration alone kept her in her modest neighborhood, a consideration human and quite feminine. Next to the joy of rubbing elbows with the fashionable world, she procured her greatest delight in the triumph over her neighbors, which she each day achieved as, perfumed and hidden in laces, she was handed into her carriage.
In this unsatisfied, false joy she ran through the last twelve months, eating up the savings of the lawyer, who continued meanwhile all suavity and good nature, calling on her three times a week, serving her in little ways, always agreeable and amusing, acting as her companion whenever it pleased her. Still she was not the dupe of his mildness, understanding very well its end. Only as a disagreeable situation to be met in the future she found it easier to banish the problem from her mind.
Thus arrived the end of January, and the day which brought to an end the seven years. At eight promptly Bofinger arrived bearing a bouquet. Time had not entirely overlooked him. He had turned slightly bald, the wrinkles had invaded every cranny, and his vest had generously rounded out. But despite such telltale evidence, he had not yielded a jot of the dress of a young dandy. He wore a fancy shirt, thin red lines on a lavender background, upright collar of the same decoration. A flowing crimson tie passed through the loop of a large ruby ring, this last the memento of a gentleman who procured such trifles at considerably below their market value. A blue silk vest with a firmament of yellow stars was designed to give the touch of gaiety needed to a suit of ruddy brown cheviot.
Pending Sheila's arrival he waited in the parlor, heels clicked together, stiff legs, bouquet to his bosom, a speech on his tongue. Then, as this attitude began to cramp him, he relaxed, placed the bouquet on the table and stalked about the room, contemplating with his chin in his palm the display of Sheila's extravagance. Many thoughts doubtless passed through his mind, which he summed up by clicking to himself and saying with conviction:
"Damn, she'll take a lot of driving!"