When she stepped into the salon, she did not for a moment see that Maman was already there, because she stood at one side of the window, half hidden in the thick tapestry curtain, looking out through the lace over the glass. By the expression of her back, Marise knew that she, too, was looking at Mme. Garnier's son on the bench. For an instant, as though Marise's fingers had dropped on white-hot metal, the wild idea came to her that it was at Maman that Jean-Pierre was smiling, that it was for Maman that he sat there. She jerked herself away angrily and instantaneously from this thought, ashamed of herself. She was getting like Jeanne, like the girls at school. Maman had heard her move, and now turned sharply around from the window, with the startled look of some one into whose bed-room you've walked without knocking at the door. But Marise never knocked at the salon door before going in. Why should she have thought of it to-day? Maman drew the heavy curtain over the window with a sweep of her bare white arm. For Maman was in grande tenue with her mauve satin low-necked evening dress on, and a camellia in her hair. Marise's first thought was that she was to have another solitary dinner. "Oh, Maman, are you going out?" "Certainly not, what makes you think I am?" asked Maman quickly. She added because it was perfectly evident what made Marise think it, "The belt on this dress has been changed and I tried it on to see if it was right. And then I saw it was dinner time." Marise was about to say something about the flower in her hair, but her antennae-like sensitiveness to what other people were feeling, made her shut her lips. She looked hard at her mother, who made herself opaque, looking back at Marise, her face and eyes and mouth firmly closed over what was in her mind. Being able to see only the surface, Marise took that in with a fresh impression of not having looked at Maman for some time. How pretty she was, with her hair like gold threads, catching the light, and how different from her crinkly hair like a golden mist around her head, were the thick, thick petals of the camellia, with their dense, close, fine-grained surface. Jeanne came to the door. "Madame is served," she said in a correct tone, standing aside as they came out. She did not look at Marise at all, but Marise knew perfectly well that she too was wondering about the evening dress and the flower. Marise began to try to invent some plausible explanation for it which she could let drop in talk to-morrow as they walked to school. * * * * * Marise had lessons to get that evening, lots of them, and hard ones, as usual. After dinner, she went back to her room, opened her history and began. It was very still in the apartment. No sound at all from Maman in the salon. Of course, Jeanne and Isabelle were both across the landing in the other kitchen, doing the work as they always were unless Maman expected callers.