In the drawing-room of the great house, decorated with faded tapestry, and on an easel in the middle room, a portrait of the stout Madame Stevens by a fashionable painter who had represented her in a languishing attitude, like a flower dying for want of water, with a die-away expression in her eyes, and her body draped in impossible curves, by way of expressing the rare quality of her millionaire soul--in the great drawing-room, with its bow-windows looking on to a clump of old trees powdered with snow, Christophe would find Colette sitting at her piano, repeating the same passage over and over again, delighting her ear with mellifluous dissonance. "Ah!" Christophe would say as he entered, "the cat is still purring!" "How wicked of you!" she would laugh.... (And she would hold out her soft little hand.) "... Listen. Isn't it pretty?" "Very pretty," he would say indifferently. "You aren't listening!... Will you please listen?" "I am listening.... It's the same thing over and over again." "Ah! you are no musician," she would say pettishly. "As if that were music or anything like it!" "What! Not music!... What is it, then, if you please?" "You know quite well: I won't tell you, because it would not be polite." "All the more reason why you should say it." "You want me to?... So much the worse for you!... Well, do you know what you are doing with your piano?... You are flirting with it." "Indeed!" "Certainly. You say to it: 'Dear piano, dear piano, say pretty things to me; kiss me; give me just one little kiss!'" "You need not say any more," said Colette, half vexed, half laughing. "You haven't the least idea of respect." "Not the least." "You are impertinent.... And then, even if it were so, isn't that the right way to love music?" "Oh, come, don't mix music up with that." "But that is music! A beautiful chord is a kiss." "I never told you that." "But isn't it true?... Why do you shrug your shoulders and make faces?" "Because it annoys me." "So much the better." "It annoys me to hear music spoken of as though it were a sort of indulgence.... Oh, it isn't your fault. It's the fault of the world you live in. The stale society in which you live regards music as a sort of legitimate vice.... Come, sit down! Play me your sonata." "No. Let us talk a little longer." "I'm not here to talk. I'm here to teach you the piano.... Come, play away!" "You're so rude!" said Colette, rather vexed--but at heart delighted to be handled so roughly.