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
