Nevertheless the lady's flow of praise was ceasing. Her smooth little brow, framed by the two flat curls, was furrowed by a searching frown. She found no more chapters or passages in which to plant her "so charming" and her "so pretty" like equal good marks of alternate colors. Suddenly her graceful face smiled again and her wide nostrils palpitated with mischief. She teased M. Raindal with the challenge that he could not guess her last reason for liking his book so much. The master pretended to search. Finally he declared with modesty: "I don't know." "Well, think a moment," commanded Mme. Chambannes familiarly, rolling her r's. M. Raindal was not trying to find the answer but thought to himself. "She is very attractive but somewhat silly!" What he said aloud, imitating her tone, was: "No, I really can't think what it is." Then she resigned herself and voiced her secret, her final surprise, and indeed her pretext for further acquaintanceship, her supreme bait. Well! precisely, next winter, she intended to travel with her husband, to go to Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile. M. Raindal's book had come in most handy, at the precise moment when she was beginning to study the Egyptian antiquities in view of that expected trip and naturally.... "My dear lady," a guttural voice interrupted them. "Forgive me.... Would you be kind enough to introduce me to Monsieur...." "Why, of course!" Then she made the presentations. "Monsieur le Marquis de Meuze ... one of our best friends ... and one who adores your book." He was a powerful old man with a majestic waistband and an aristocratic carriage. His white whiskers and curled up white mustache gave him the air of an Austrian general, for his was one of those heads which one readily fancies wearing a gold-braided cocked hat ornamented with a panache of green feathers. At the time of the financial smash of 1882, he had suffered from an attack of facial paralysis which had deprived him of the use of his left eyelid. It hung gray and lifeless and hid three quarters of his eye--this infirmity completed, like a glorious wound, his resemblance to an old warrior.