Boulogne, which foamed like a cascade of green opposite this pretty
little house in Neuilly. The day was warm and the drive, despite the
shaded, watered avenues, a dusty, fatiguing one. Mrs. Sheldam had,
doubtfully, it is true, suggested the bourgeois comfort of the
Métropolitain, but she was frowned on by her enthusiastic niece. What!
ride underground in such weather? So they arrived at the poet's not in
the best of humour, for Mrs. Sheldam had quietly chidden her charge on
the score of her "flightiness." These foreign celebrities were well
enough in their way, but--! And now Ermentrude, instead of looking
Octave Kéroulan in the face, preferred the vista of the pale blue sky,
awash with a scattered, fleecy white cloud, the rolling edges of which
echoed the dazzling sunshine. The garden was not large, its few trees
were of ample girth, and their shadows most satisfying to eyes weary of
the city's bright, hard surfaces. There were no sentimental plaster
casts to disturb the soft harmonies of this walled-in retreat, and if
Ermentrude preferred to regard with obstinacy unusual in her mobile
temperament the picture of Paris below them, it was because she felt
that Kéroulan was literally staring at her.

A few moments after their arrival and with the advent of tea, he had
accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met
him--he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her
aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her
knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she
was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his
paces before his wife--naturally a disinterested spectator--or before
her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired hour found
her disquieted. She did not have many moments to analyze these mixed
emotions, for he spoke, and his voice was agreeably modulated.