CHAPTER IV

" - MADAME JULIETTE ROUX, if you please? "

" Will Monsieur please come in?" the maid asked.

Without demanding my name or waiting for my answer, she made me cross a small, dark antechamber, and led me into a room where at first I could only distinguish a lamp covered by a large lamp-shade, which burned low in a corner. The maid raised the flame of the lamp and carried out an otteir skin cape which had been thrown on the sofa.

" I will go tell madame," she said.

And she disappeared, leaving me alone in the room.

So I was at her house ! For eight days the thought of this visit had tortured me. I had no special business, I simply wanted to see Juliette ; some kind of keen curiosity, which I did not stop to analyze, drew me to her. Several times I had gone to the Rue Saint-Petersbourg with the firm intention of calling on her, but at the last moment my nerve failed me, and I left without mustering sufficient courage to cross her threshold. And now I was the most embarrassed being in the world, and I regretted my foolish step, for obviously it was a foolish step. How would she receive me? What should I say? What caused me the greatest uneasiness was that after I had made a thorough search in my brain I found not a single phrase, not a single word with which to begin our conversation when Juliette entered. What if words should fail me and I should be left standing here with gaping mouth ! How ridiculous that would be !

I examined the room into which Juliette was presently