"Tell me, where have you been straying to? Your elbow is covered with
cobwebs and plaster."

"My elbow," he muttered, slightly disturbed. "Yes indeed, it's true.
A speck or two, I must have come in for them on my way down from my
office."

Several people were taking their departure. It was close on midnight.
Two footmen were noiselessly removing the empty cups and the plates with
cakes. In front of the hearth the ladies had re-formed and, at the
same time, narrowed their circle and were chatting more carelessly than
before in the languid atmosphere peculiar to the close of a party. The
very room was going to sleep, and slowly creeping shadows were cast by
its walls. It was then Fauchery spoke of departure. Yet he once more
forgot his intention at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting
from her cares as hostess, and as she sat in her wonted seat, silent,
her eyes fixed on a log which was turning into embers, her face appeared
so white and so impassable that doubt again possessed him. In the glow
of the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner of her lip
became white. It was Nana's very mole, down to the color of the hair.
He could not refrain from whispering something about it in Vandeuvres's
ear. Gad, it was true; the other had never noticed it before. And both
men continued this comparison of Nana and the countess. They discovered
a vague resemblance about the chin and the mouth, but the eyes were not
at all alike. Then, too, Nana had a good-natured expression, while with
the countess it was hard to decide--she might have been a cat, sleeping
with claws withdrawn and paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous
quiver.

"All the same, one could have her," declared Fauchery.