transformation Time had wrought.

"You are darker than ever," she said. "You look like a man of the sea."

Julio was finding her even lovelier than before, and felt sure that
possessing her was well worth all the contrarieties which had brought
about his trip to South America. She was taller than he, with an
elegantly proportioned slenderness. "She has the musical step,"
Desnoyers had told himself, when seeing her in his imagination; and now,
on beholding her again, the first thing that he admired was her rhythmic
tread, light and graceful as she passed through the garden seeking
another seat. Her features were not regular but they had a piquant
fascination--a true Parisian face. Everything that had been invented for
the embellishment of feminine charm was used about her person with the
most exquisite fastidiousness. She had always lived for herself. Only
a few months before had she abdicated a part of this sweet selfishness,
sacrificing reunions, teas, and calls in order to give Desnoyers some of
the afternoon hours.

Stylish and painted like a priceless doll, with no loftier ambition
than to be a model, interpreting with personal elegance the latest
confections of the modistes, she was at last experiencing the same
preoccupations and joys as other women, creating for herself an inner
life. The nucleus of this new life, hidden under her former frivolity,
was Desnoyers. Just as she was imagining that she had reorganized
her existence--adjusting the satisfactions of worldly elegance to the
delights of love in intimate secrecy--a fulminating catastrophe (the
intervention of her husband whose possible appearance she seemed to
have overlooked) had disturbed her thoughtless happiness. She who was
accustomed to think herself the centre of the universe, imagining that