In the beautiful red drawing-room--for they have a drawing-room in red
damask, with a console between the windows and a pretty table in the
centre of the light-flowered carpet--Sidonie has established herself in
the attitude of a woman holding a reception, a circle of chairs of many
shapes around her. Here and there are books, reviews, a little work-
basket in the shape of a gamebag, with silk tassels, a bunch of violets
in a glass vase, and green plants in the jardinieres. Everything is
arranged exactly as in the Fromonts' apartments on the floor below; but
the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from the
vulgar, is not yet refined. You would say it was a passable copy of a
pretty genre picture. The hostess's attire, even, is too new; she looks
more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home. In
Risler's eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to
say so as he enters the salon, but, in face of his wife's wrathful
glance, he checks himself in terror.

"You see, it's four o'clock," she says, pointing to the clock with an
angry gesture. "No one will come. But I take it especially ill of
Claire not to come up. She is at home--I am sure of it--I can hear her."

Indeed, ever since noon, Sidonie has listened intently to the slightest
sounds on the floor below, the child's crying, the closing of doors.
Risler attempts to go down again in order to avoid a renewal of the
conversation at breakfast; but his wife will not allow him to do so. The
very least he can do is to stay with her when everybody else abandons
her, and so he remains there, at a loss what to say, rooted to the spot,
like those people who dare not move during a storm for fear of attracting
the lightning. Sidonie moves excitedly about, going in and out of the
salon, changing the position of a chair, putting it back again, looking
at herself as she passes the mirror, and ringing for her maid to send her