slipped away from her, Sabine refreshed, worldly, elegant, mistress of herself . . . the Sabine who had existed in the first days of the house on Murray Hill. The odd sense of comradeship persisted. It was the same spirit that had united them on the morning, long ago, when Sabine called at the Rue Raynouard, arriving as an enemy and departing as a friend. (She had been right in the instinct that led her into that call. Ellen belonged to him now, after all those years, as much of her as any mere process of law could deliver into his hands.)
It was Victorine who broke the precedent of fifteen years by bringing the tea with her own hands. Victorine, the housekeeper, the head of the entire ménage in the Avenue du Bois, bent her dignity, stepped down from her pedestal to carry a tea tray, because she feared that some morsel of fascinating interest might escape her ears. How could she resist this spectacle? This occasion? This friendly encounter ("Figure-toi," she would say in the servants' hall) between the two wives of her master. These Americans. . . .
But she strained her ears and summoned in vain a youthful uncertain memory of English, for neither of the wives said anything of importance while she was in the room. They discussed the lateness of the spring, and even the political conditions, as if there were nothing at all extraordinary in the situation. (The cabinet, said the new Mrs. Callendar, in which M. de Cyon had served, was gone to the wall and all his gentle intrigues come to nothing.)
When Victorine, having exhausted all the possibilities of delay by poking and fussing over the tea tray, was forced by decency to quit the room, Sabine rose and said, "I know the habits of Victorine. She is at this minute standing outside the door."
To prove it she walked quickly to the door and, flinging it open, saw Victorine sidle away with a pompous air of having many duties upon her mind.
"She has listened like that before . . . many times. It is her curiosity and one can't blame her for that. If I had been born
