“Yes, I have a new frock. Do you think it pretty?” “Charming, and perfectly harmonious. We can certainly say that nowadays it is possible to give expression to the lightest textiles.” He walked around her, gently touching the material of the gown, adjusting its folds with the tips of his fingers, like a man that knows a woman's toilet as the modiste knows it, having all his life employed his artist's taste and his athlete's muscles in depicting with slender brush changing and delicate fashions, in revealing feminine grace enclosed within a prison of velvet and silk, or hidden by snowy laces. He finished his scrutiny by declaring: “It is a great success, and it becomes you perfectly!” The lady allowed herself to be admired, quite content to be pretty and to please him. No longer in her first youth, but still beautiful, not very tall, somewhat plump, but with that freshness which lends to a woman of forty an appearance of having only just reached full maturity, she seemed like one of those roses that flourish for an indefinite time up to the moment when, in too full a bloom, they fall in an hour. Beneath her blonde hair she possessed the shrewdness to preserve all the alert and youthful grace of those Parisian women who never grow old; who carry within themselves a surprising vital force, an indomitable power of resistance, and who remain for twenty years triumphant and indestructible, careful above all things of their bodies and ever watchful of their health. She raised her veil and murmured: “Well, you do not kiss me!” “I have been smoking.” “Pooh!” said the lady. Then, holding up her face, she added, “So much the worse!” Their lips met. He took her parasol and divested her of her spring jacket with the prompt, swift movement indicating familiarity with this service. As she seated herself on the divan, he asked with an air of interest: “Is all going well with your husband?” “Very well; he must be making a speech in the House at this very moment.” “Ah! On what, pray?” “Oh--no doubt on beets or on rape-seed oil, as usual!” Her husband, the Comte de Guilleroy, deputy from the Eure, made a special study of all questions of agricultural interest. Perceiving in one corner a sketch that she did not recognize, the lady walked across the studio, asking, “What is that?” “A pastel that I have just begun--the portrait of the Princesse de Ponteve.” “You know,” said the lady gravely, “that if you go back to painting portraits of women I shall close your studio. I know only too well to what that sort of thing leads!” “Oh, but I do not make twice a portrait of Any!” was the answer. “I hope not, indeed!” She examined the newly begun pastel sketch with the air of a woman that understands the technic of art. She stepped back, advanced, made a shade of her hand, sought the place where the best light fell on the sketch, and finally expressed her satisfaction. “It is very good. You succeed admirably with pastel work.”