I examined the room into which Juliette was presently to come. It was a dressing room which also served as a parlor. It made a rather unfavorable impression on me. The toilet table, ostentatiously displayed with its two wash basins of cracked, pink cut glass, shocked me. The walls and ceiling, hung with loud red satin, the furniture, bordered with elaborate plush hangings, the knick-knacks, costly and ugly, placed here and there on the furniture, the queer tables serving no apparent purpose, consols weighed down with heavy ornaments--all this bespoke a vulgar taste. I noticed in the center of the mantlepiece, between two massive vases of onyx, a terra cotta statuette of Cupid, smiling with a sort of grimace and offering a flower held at the tips of his outspread fingers. Every detail revealed, on the one hand, a love of expensive and unrefined luxury, and on the other a regrettable predilection for romance and puerile affection. It was at once distressing and sentimental. Nevertheless, and that was a relief to me, I saw here no evidence of that incongruity, that transitory air, that severity of aspect so characteristic of ladies' boarding houses, those apartments where one is made aware of a haggard existence, where by the number of knick-knacks one can count the number of lovers who have passed there, lovers for an hour, a night, a year; where every chair tells of the lack of decency, the unfaithfulness; where on the glass one can see the tragedy of fortune's fickleness; on the marble, traces of a tear still warm; on the candlestick, blood drops still moist. The door opened and Juliette appeared wearing a white, long flowing dress. I trembled, color came to my face; but she recognized me and, smiling that smile of hers which at last I found again, she stretched out her hand. "Ah! Monsieur Mintié!" she said, "how nice of you not to have forgotten me! Has it been long since you saw that eccentric Lirat?" "Why, yes, Madame, I have not seen him since the day I had the honor of meeting you at his place." "Ah, my God, I thought you two never separated at all." "It is true," I replied, "that I see him quite often. But I have been working all these days." As I thought I detected a note of irony in the sound of her voice, I added, to provoke her: "What a great artist, isn't he?" Juliette let this remark pass unanswered. "So you are always working?" She took up the subject again. "For the rest, I am told you live like a regular recluse. Really, one sees very little of you, Monsieur Mintié!" The conversation took a quite ordinary turn, the theatre furnishing food for nearly all of it. A remark which I made seemed to astound her, and she was rather scandalized. "What, you don't like the theatre? Is it possible--and you an artist? I am passionately fond of it. The theatre is so amusing! We are going to the Varieté tonight, for the fourth time, mind you." A feeble yelp came from behind the door.