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By Root 1333 0

of the dressing room. Her gaze followed the pink draperies all the way up to the silver crown, through which peered a cherub with plump cheeks readying his arrow. Her eyes lingered on the furniture, on the marble top of the dressing table crowded with jars and implements she no longer recognized. She went to the bathtub, still filled with stagnant water. With her foot she kicked away the fabrics left lying on the white satin armchairs: Echo’s costume, petticoats, towels she had tossed aside. And all these things spoke with the voices of shame: the nymph’s costume told of her having accepted the role of Echo for the novel thrill of offering herself to Maxime in public; the bathtub exhaled the fragrance of her body; the water in which she had soaked filled the room with a sick woman’s fever; the dressing table, with its soaps and oils, and the round curves of the furniture, so reminiscent of a bed, spoke brutally to her of her flesh, her loves, and all the filth she wanted to forget. She went back to the center of the room, her face crimson, because she had no idea how to escape from this bedroom scent, this luxury that revealed itself as brazenly as a prostitute, parading this abundance of pink. The room was as naked as she was. The pink tub, the pink skin of the tent, the pink marble of the two tables seemed to come alive, to stretch and curl and wrap themselves around her with such a living sensual embrace that she shut her eyes, bowed her head, and gave in to the crushing weight of the lace that adorned the ceilings and walls.

In the darkness, however, she again noticed the flesh-colored stain of the dressing room and imagined the gray softness of the bedroom, the tender gold of the small salon, the garish green of the conservatory—so many complicit riches. These were the places where her feet had soaked up the rotten sap. She would not have slept with Maxime on a pallet in some garret. That would have been too vile. Silk had made her crime stylish. And she dreamt of tearing down all this lace, of spitting on this silk, of kicking her big bed to pieces, and of trailing her luxury through some gutter from which it would emerge as worn and soiled as she was.

When she opened her eyes, she went over to the mirror and looked at herself again, examined herself closely. She was done for. She saw herself dead. Her whole face told her that her nervous breakdown was nearly complete. Maxime—the ultimate perversion of her senses— had finished his work, exhausted her flesh, unhinged her mind. She had no more joys to savor, no further hope of awakening. At this thought a savage rage was rekindled in her. And in one final paroxysm of desire, she dreamt of seizing her prey one more time, of dying in Maxime’s arms and taking him with her. Louise could not marry him. Louise knew full well that he did not belong to her, since she had seen them kissing each other on the lips. Then she threw a fur cloak over her shoulders so as not to cross the dance floor naked. She went downstairs.

In the small salon she found herself face-to-face with Mme Sidonie, who had again stationed herself on the conservatory steps to relish the drama. But she no longer knew what to think when Saccard reappeared with Maxime and to her whispered questions brusquely replied that she was dreaming, that there was “nothing at all.” Then the truth dawned on her. Her yellow face turned white: this really was too much. Quietly, she went over and glued her ear to the door of the staircase, hoping that she would hear Renée sobbing upstairs. When the young woman opened the door, it nearly struck her sister-in-law in the face.

“You’re spying on me!” Renée said angrily.

But Mme Sidonie replied with splendid disdain: “As if I’d bother with your filth!”

Then, hiking up her magician’s robes, she withdrew with a majestic glare: “It’s not my fault, darling, if you’ve had some mishaps. . . . But understand that I hold no grudge. And that you would have found a second mother in me and may find one still. I’ll be happy to see you at my place whenever it suits you.”

Renée wasn’t