‘Why, yes, pretty.’

For a moment Irma relapsed into her reverie, then she said, smiling:  ‘Dash it all!  How lucky you are!’

Then she shook herself, and exclaimed, rising from the table:  ’Nearly three o’clock!  Ah! my children, I must turn you out of the house.  Yes, I have an appointment with an architect; I am going to see some ground near the Parc Monceau, you know, in the new quarter which is being built.  I have scented a stroke of business in that direction.’

They had returned to the drawing-room.  She stopped before a looking-glass, annoyed at seeing herself so flushed.

‘It’s about that house, isn’t it?’ asked Jory.  ’You have found the money, then?’

She brought her hair down over her brow again, then with her hands seemed to efface the flush on her cheeks; elongated the oval of her face, and rearranged her tawny head, which had all the charm of a work of art; and finally, turning round, she merely threw Jory these words by way of reply:  Look! there’s my Titianesque effect back again.’

She was already, amidst their laughter, edging them towards the hall, where once more, without speaking, she took Claude’s hands in her own, her glance yet again diving into the depths of his eyes.  When he reached the street he felt uncomfortable.  The cold air dissipated his intoxication; he remorsefully reproached himself for having spoken of Christine in that house, and swore to himself that he would never set foot there again.

Indeed, a kind of shame deterred Claude from going home, and when his companion, excited by the luncheon and feeling inclined to loaf about, spoke of going to shake hands with Bongrand, he was delighted with the idea, and both made their way to the Boulevard de Clichy.

For the last twenty years Bongrand had there occupied a very large studio, in which he had in no wise sacrificed to the tastes of the day, to that magnificence of hangings and nick-nacks with which young painters were then beginning to surround themselves.  It was the bare, greyish studio of the old style, exclusively ornamented with sketches by the master, which hung there unframed, and in close array like the votive offerings in a chapel.  The only tokens of elegance consisted of a cheval glass, of the First Empire style, a large Norman wardrobe, and two arm-chairs upholstered in Utrecht velvet, and threadbare with usage.  In one corner, too, a bearskin which had lost nearly all its hair covered a large couch.  However, the artist had retained since his youthful days, which had been spent in the camp of the Romanticists, the habit of wearing a special costume, and it was in flowing trousers, in a dressing-gown secured at the waist by a silken cord, and with his head covered with a priest’s skull-cap, that he received his visitors.

He came to open the door himself, holding his palette and brushes.

’So here you are!  It was a good idea of yours to come!  I was thinking about you, my dear fellow.  Yes, I don’t know who it was that told me of your return, but I said to myself that it wouldn’t be long before I saw you.’