the fair unknown had vanished. He returned with rapture to the
thousand luxuries of his own rooms, and spent the evening at the
Marquise d'Espard's to cleanse himself, if possible, of the smirch
left by the fancy that had driven him so relentlessly during the day.

And yet, when he was in bed, the vision came back to him, but clearer
and brighter than the reality. The girl was walking in front of him;
now and again as she stepped across a gutter her skirts revealed a
round calf; her shapely hips swayed as she walked. Again Andrea longed
to speak to her--and he dared not, he, Marcosini, a Milanese nobleman!
Then he saw her turn into the dark passage where she had eluded him,
and blamed himself for not having followed her.

"For, after all," said he to himself, "if she really wished to avoid
me and put me off her track, it is because she loves me. With women of
that stamp, coyness is a proof of love. Well, if I had carried the
adventure any further, it would, perhaps, have ended in disgust. I
will sleep in peace."

The Count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest sensations, as men
do involuntarily when they have as much brains as heart, and he was
surprised when he saw the strange damsel of the Rue Froid-Manteau once
more, not in the pictured splendor of his dream but in the bare
reality of dreary fact. And, in spite of it all, if fancy had stripped
the woman of her livery of misery, it would have spoilt her for him;
for he wanted her, he longed for her, he loved her--with her muddy
stockings, her slipshod feet, her straw bonnet! He wanted her in the
very house where he had seen her go in.

"Am I bewitched by vice, then?" he asked himself in dismay. "Nay, I