“Enough.  Sit down, now, and let’s talk of something else.  Do you know your apartment is charming?  Which saint is that?” she asked, examining the picture, over the mantel, of the monk on his knees beside a cardinal’s hat and cloak.

“I do not know.”

“I will find out for you.  I have the lives of all the saints at home.  It ought to be easy to find out about a cardinal who renounced the purple to go live in a hut.  Wait.  I think Saint Peter Damian did, but I am not sure.  I have such a poor memory.  Help me think.”

“But I don’t know who he is!”

She came closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Are you angry at me?”

“I should say I am!  When I desire you frantically, when I’ve been dreaming for a whole week about this meeting, you come here and tell me that all is over between us, that you do not love me—­”

She became demure.  “But if I did not love you, would I have come to you?  Understand, then, that reality kills a dream; that it is better for us not to expose ourselves to fearful regrets.  We are not children, you see.  No!  Let me go.  Do not squeeze me like that!” Very pale, she struggled in his embrace.  “I swear to you that I will go away and that you shall never see me again if you do not let me loose.”  Her voice became hard.  She was almost hissing her words.  He let go of her.  “Sit down there behind the table.  Do that for me.”  And tapping the floor with her heel, she said, in a tone of melancholy, “Then it is impossible to be friends, only friends, with a man.  But it would be very nice to come and see you without having evil thoughts to fear, wouldn’t it?” She was silent.  Then she added, “Yes, just to see each other—­and if we did not have any sublime things to say to each other, it is also very nice to sit and say nothing!”

Then she said, “My time is up.  I must go home.”

“And leave me with no hope?” he exclaimed, kissing her gloved hands.

She did not answer, but gently shook her head, then, as he looked pleadingly at her, she said, “Listen.  If you will promise to make no demands on me and to be good, I will come here night after next at nine o’clock.”

He promised whatever she wished.  And as he raised his head from her hands and as his lips brushed lightly over her breast, which seemed to tighten, she disengaged her hands, caught his nervously, and, clenching her teeth, offered her neck to his lips.  Then she fled.

“Oof!” he said, closing the door after her.  He was at the same time satisfied and vexed.

Satisfied, because he found her enigmatic, changeful, charming.  Now that he was alone he recalled her to memory.  He remembered her tight black dress, her fur cloak, the warm collar of which had caressed him as he was covering her neck with kisses.  He remembered that she wore no jewellery, except sparkling blue sapphire eardrops.  He remembered the wayward blonde hair escaping from under the dark green otter