His head was oval yet chubby, all flesh, as it were, but for a crown of brown hair around his baldness. M. Raindal thought he had a good-natured smile. Gradually the master thawed out. He imparted to the abbé some picturesque details concerning the Thebaid which, from professional instinct, he had explored. The priest listened studiously, showed him deference and solemnly nodded from the back of his head. Zozé took advantage of a pause to ask: "You will stay for dinner, M. l'abbé?" "Well, yes, madame," he replied without hesitation, his round cheeks distended in a cordial smile. "Yes, surely, if you will have me!" "And you, dear master?" Zozé pursued. "Will you join the party?" "Oh, it is impossible, dear lady," M. Raindal sighed. "I am expected.... Believe me, I am very sorry...." He ceased abruptly as Chambannes entered, wearily caressing his thick hinge-like mustache. Everyone stood up. He shook hands with M. Raindal and asked, patting Zozé's neck, as one might do to a school-girl: "Well, how did the lesson go, my dear sir?... Are you satisfied with your pupil?" "Very much gratified, monsieur ... an excellent beginning." "Oh, we have not accomplished very much!" Zozé said. "But you are coming next Thursday!... Thursday, I shall forbid the door.... I shall be at home to no one.... You promise to come, don't you, dear master?" M. Raindal promised. Zozé and Germaine went with him into the drawing-room and the latter left with him. They shook hands as they parted, Mme. de Marquesse pulling his arm so sharply that he felt a cramp in the shoulder. He looked at his watch under a lamp-post. It was a quarter to seven. "Sapristi!" he murmured, horrified. And once more he hailed a cab. * * * * * The boldness of fear moved him to anticipate irony or unwelcome queries by an affectation of jovial talkativeness. In a light vein, he told of his visit as if it had been a séance at the Institute or a lecture at the Collège de France. He multiplied the details, described the dresses and even gave an imitation of the abbé's southern accent. Thérèse affected to be interested and replied with good humor; she seemed to have forgotten the morning's quarrel. Mme. Raindal was silent. Why should she protest? Why should she wish to dissuade her husband from this fatal intercourse with people devoid of religion? Did she not know that he was irrevocably damned, marked beforehand, because of his own atheism, for eternal torments? She remembered, moreover, the master's anger at the occasion of the Chambannes' dinner party: it was still alive in her mind and closed her mouth with wise caution. She only allowed herself a frown when M. Raindal gave a parody of the abbé; her pained expression made Thérèse laugh so much that her father began to have his suspicions concerning her good-natured remarks.