But some new clients interrupted the conversation, and as they were of importance, M. Tabourin, hesitating, assumed a distressed expression. Philippe Lagier, generally so impatient, was sorry for him. He closed the door between the two rooms in order to enjoy undisturbed the tête-à-tête with the third person in the drama. Over the compromising initials in the petition, he wrote the whole name: "Anne de Sézery." And he brought before him in a vision the young girl with brown hair, the shade of chestnuts that fall before the harvest, a face one could never forget, partly because of the disillusioned expression about the mouth in direct contrast to the bloom of her clear cheeks, and especially attractive because of the long narrow eyes flashing golden sparks, whose warm desires seemed to contradict the premature languor of her bearing. Slender, well-formed and strong, she gave the impression of having been born tired, as if she thought it useless to pursue too great aims. She lived with her father in a family château at Saint Ismier, a village built on the slope overlooking the wide valley of Grésivaudan. Her independent manners, her self-possession on horseback, her conversation which betrayed a wide and catholic taste in reading, and an almost mystical enthusiasm for secular subjects, these with her fortune, not big, but apparently comfortable, gave her a motley following of young men--of whom he had been one. For a long time he had been desperately in love with her: she singled him out for the intellectual qualities which delighted in stripping the world of its false poetry--and sometimes of its true poetry as well--and still he could not believe himself the favored one. Who could dare to believe himself favored? He had loved her in his own fashion, which implied reserve and caution, but had it come to a question of marrying her, he would have raised a thousand objections. But at that time such an obscure person would not have contented her, and, later, would he still have cared? Albert Derize, whom he sometimes took with him on his visits, had become absorbed in the study of some ancient title-deeds at the château, where he found documents for his reconstruction of old Dauphiné. When Albert took part in the conversation, he treated the girl's audacities and paradoxes with the candor and loyalty of a comrade to whom one does not feel bound to show any particular consideration. "He was already thinking of little Elizabeth Molay whom he had met in the street and did not know," thought Philippe. "It was he who mentioned her to me and called my attention to her."