my life, and never will be, anyone but you, Any."

She took him by the arm, and turning again toward the divan made him sit
beside her.

"Of what were you thinking?" she asked.

"I am looking for a subject to paint."

"What, pray?"

"I don't know, you see, since I am still seeking it."

"What have you been doing lately?"

He was obliged to tell her of all the visits he had received, about
all the dinners and soirees he had attended, and to repeat all the
conversations and chit-chat. Both were really interested in all these
futile and familiar details of fashionable life. The little rivalries,
the flirtations, either well known or suspected, the judgments, a
thousand times heard and repeated, upon the same persons, the same
events and opinions, were bearing away and drowning both their minds in
that troubled and agitated stream called Parisian life. Knowing everyone
in all classes of society, he as an artist to whom all doors were open,
she as the elegant wife of a Conservative deputy, they were experts
in that sport of brilliant French chatter, amiably satirical, banal,
brilliant but futile, with a certain shibboleth which gives a particular
and greatly envied reputation to those whose tongues have become supple
in this sort of malicious small talk.