Taking for granted that everybody was overwhelmed with delight at seeing her, on she came, with a bow here and a handshake there, until in the centre of the room she halted abruptly.
“Théodule,” she cried, “I forgot to tell Madame Hortense to send up that gown this evening. Telephone her for me. And hasten, or the shop will be closed.” The Minister of Public Services obeyed and left the room.
Then she turned and on she came again. With the sinuous step of the walk she had learned at the Conservatoire, on and on, smiling, smiling, her eyelids painted sky blue, her alizarin lips smiling apart like something unreal, jingle by jingle, faintly clicking her high heels on the parquetry, on and on, smiling always, came the great Gabrielle Belletaille of the Opéra Comique.
Ventrillon had never before in his life made an effort to please, and now his mind refused to work. In fact, it was scattered into tiny little bits all over the salon of Mme. Sutrin. “What a marvellous subject to paint!” was the only idea his devastated brain could hold. He could do naught but stare at the extraordinary creature and breathe with difficulty. She was almost upon him.
Now she was speaking to him in that golden voice, a single intonation of which could break a thousand hearts, and was extending one of those chalk-white hands, a single gesture of which could from a thousand bodies draw a thousand souls.
“And this,” she was saying, “must be the Adonis of whom Madame Sutrin spoke.”
Ventrillon grasped his impudence and yearned for his breath and his voice; but everything he could conceive was either too long or too obvious, and with every fraction of a second it was swiftly becoming too late. One of those terrible tea-silences had fallen when nobody can think of anything more to say.
“Ah, Madame Venus,” he heard his voice stammer at last, resounding in his ears above the tinkle of teaspoons, as if he had been shouting, “n-n-not Adonis; for that f-foolish Adonis ran away!”
He saw her narrow her eyes as she looked at him, and heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Oh, my God!” thought Ventrillon, “I am ruined! I have gone too far!”
“Audacious!” she murmured. “I like audacity.” She flashed all her teeth upon him and for the moment blinded him. “Come and talk to me.”