Renovales, who had moved away from her, recovering his sternness, felt cut by that mocking laugh and said in a quiet tone:
"And what if it were true? What if I loved you?"
The laugh of the countess rang out again, but forced, false, with a tone that seemed to tear the artist's breast.
"Just what I expected! The confession I spoke of! That's the third one I've received to-day. But isn't it possible to talk with a man of anything but love?"
She was already on her feet, looking around for her hat, for she could not remember where she had left it.
"I'm going, cher maître. It isn't safe to stay here. I'll try to come earlier next time so that the twilight won't catch us. It's a treacherous hour; the moment of the greatest follies."
The painter objected to her leaving. Her carriage had not yet come. She could wait a few minutes longer. He promised to be quiet, not to talk to her, as long as it seemed to displease her.
The countess remained, but she would not sit down in the chair. She walked around the studio for a few moments and finally opened the organ that stood near the window.
"Let's have a little music; that will quiet us. You, Mariano, sit still as a mouse in your chair and don't come near me. Be a good boy now."
Her fingers rested on the keys; her feet moved the pedals and the Largo of Handel, grave, mystic, dreamy, swelled softly through the studio. The melody filled the wide room, already wrapped in shadows, it made its way through the tapestries, prolonging its winged whisper through the other two studios, as though it were the song of an organ played by invisible hands in a deserted cathedral at the mysterious hour of dusk.