He said nothing, but hastily seizing Marianne's hand, he drew her face close to his lips, her pink nostrils dilated as if the better to breathe the incense of love; and wild, distracted, intoxicated, he pressed his feverish, burning lips upon that fresh mouth that he felt exhaled the perfume of a flower that opens to the morning dew. "I love you now, I loved you then!--" Marianne said to him, after that kiss that paled his cheeks. Rosas had risen: a thunder of applause greeted the termination of a song in the other salon and the throng was pouring into the smaller salon. Marianne saw Uncle Kayser, who was arguing with Ramel, whose kindly, lean face wore an expression of weariness. She also rose, grasped the duke's hands with a nervous pressure and said as she still gazed at him: "There is my uncle. We shall see each other again, shall we not?" She crushed Rosas with her electric glance. Preceding the duke, she went straight to Kayser and took his arm, leaning on it as if to show that she was not alone, that she had a natural protector, and was not, as Rosas might have supposed, a girl without any position. Kayser was almost astonished at the eagerness of his niece. "Let us go!" she said to him. "What! leave? Why, there is to be a supper." "Well! we will sup at the studio," she replied nervously. "We will discuss the morality of art." She had now attained her end. She realized that anything she might add would cool the impression already made on the duke. She wished to leave him under the intoxication of that kiss. "Let us go!" said Kayser, drawing himself up in an ill-humored way. "Since you wish it--what a funny idea!--Ramel," he said, extending his hand to the old journalist, "if your feelings prompt you, I should like to show you some canvases." "I go out so rarely," said Ramel. "Huron!" said the painter. "Puritan!" said Marianne, also offering her hand to Denis Ramel. Rosas looked after her and saw her disappear amongst the guests in the other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers; and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little Japanese salon was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, while she thought: "He spoke to me of the past almost in the same terms as Lissac. Is human nature at the bottom merely commonplace, that two men of entirely different characters make almost identical confessions?" While she was recalling that passionate moment, the duke was experiencing a feeling of disappointment because of their interrupted conversation, and he reproached himself for not having followed Marianne, for having allowed her to escape without telling her-- But what had he to tell her?