T the foot of the staircase that led up to the reception rooms Diane de Gimeuse made the mistake of looking at herself in a glass. She was seized with a boundless sense of despair; and it needed all her self-control to prevent her from bursting into sobs.
After reigning for more than thirty years as the loveliest woman in Paris, Diane was abdicating. She had gone into a long retirement, and was now returning to society for the first time, and returning with white hair.
Her friend, Mme. Arnold, at whose house she was making her reappearance, met her in the doorway of the great drawing-room and whispered to her:
“Try to smile, Diane, and you will still be the prettiest woman here.”
Diane could not smile. Besides, what was the good? No one was looking at her; and she remembered the stir and the movement of curiosity which her arrival used to provoke, in the old days, wherever she went.
A tall man, with a grey moustache, came and kissed Mme. Arnold’s hand. Her duties as hostess calling her elsewhere, she kept him back:
“So you have come, illustrious novelist! Well, my dear Villeneuve, won’t you give your arm to Mme. de. But how silly of me! I was just going to introduce you, and you have known each other for years!”
Then she hurried away. Villeneuve hesitated for a second, while offering his arm, and Diane said:
“Confess, monsieur, that you do not recognise me.”
He replied, frankly:
“As a matter of fact, I did not recognise you at first.”
“It’s my white hair, is it not? It makes a great difference in me.”
“Yes,” he said. “It improves you immensely.”
“That’s very nice of you,” she replied. “But, really, I should not have minded. I have only three or four times had the pleasure of meeting you; and I could hardly expect you to remember.”
They sat down a little to one side, in a corner from which they were able to watch the younger people dancing. Diane, filled with melancholy impressions, was silent. She observed her former rivals. They were all still struggling to maintain their outward charms; and Diane asked herself painfully whether she too could not have postponed the irremediable renunciation. But, seeing that Villeneuve was looking at her, she drew herself up and smiled, in spite of herself.
Then he said:
“I paid you a stereotyped compliment just now, when I told you that the change had improved you. But I want to say so again, because I mean it.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes, there is something gentler about you, something more approachable.”
“So I looked neither gentle nor approachable, when I had fair hair and dressed like a girl?”
“I don’t know what you were like then. I see you as you are.”
“And the woman that I am,” she said, in a voice with which a touch of irony and a touch of bitterness were blended, “finds greater favour in the eyes of Villeneuve the novelist?”
“Is it an offence, on my part, if she does?”
“An offence against the past, yes.”
“Tah! Yesterday’s past is so near! What separates you from it? The colour of your hair.”
“And a few wrinkles,” she murmured. “Let us talk of something else, do you mind?”
They chatted at random, first in an indifferent tone, afterwards more intimately, as though their liking for each other sprang rather from the sound of their voices than from the words which they uttered. Then they were silent, and Diane thought that he was seeking a pretext to leave her. Soon, however, she perceived, without turning her head, that he once more had his eyes fixed upon her. And this persistence gave her a certain feeling of embarrassment.
At last Villeneuve said:
“You know I am something of a professional psychologist? It’s as good a trade as another. Would you say that it gives me the right to put a very indiscreet question to you?”
“Yes, for I shall still have the right not to reply.”
“Well, I should like to know. ... There is something that interests me immensely. Why or how did you come to resolve?”
“To cease being the beautiful Mme. de Gimeuse?” she said, completing the sentence for him.
“No, but to cease insisting upon being thought so.”
“Oh, I took the resolution when I felt that it was necessary. Perhaps I even felt it too late.”
“But there must have been something, an incident of some kind?”
“Not at all.”
“Still”
“There was nothing at all, I tell you.”
“You won’t answer?”
“No.”
“A glass of champagne, then.”
“With pleasure.”
She took the glass which he handed her, drank it almost at a draught, and at once, changing her mind, murmured: