The whole vast city lay before them and beneath them, with its ordered brilliancy and its mingled aspect of compression and expansion; and yet the huge Parisian murmur died away before it reached Mrs.Vivian's sky-parlor, which seemed to Bernard the brightest and quietest little habitation he had ever known.
His hostess came rustling in at last; she seemed agitated; she knocked over with the skirt of her dress a little gilded chair which was reflected in the polished parquet as in a sheet of looking-glass.

Mrs.
Vivian had a fixed smile--she hardly knew what to say.
"I found your address at the banker's," said Bernard.

"Your maid, at Blanquais, refused to give it to me." Mrs.Vivian gave him a little look--there was always more or less of it in her face--which seemed equivalent to an entreaty that her interlocutor should spare her.
"Maids are so strange," she murmured; "especially the French!" It pleased Bernard for the moment not to spare her, though he felt a sort of delight of kindness for her.
"Your going off from Blanquais so suddenly, without leaving me any explanation, any clue, any message of any sort--made me feel at first as if you did n't wish that I should look you up.

It reminded me of the way you left Baden--do you remember ?--three years ago." "Baden was so charming--but one could n't stay forever," said Mrs.
Vivian.
"I had a sort of theory one could.

Our life was so pleasant that it seemed a shame to break the spell, and if no one had moved I am sure we might be sitting there now." Mrs.Vivian stared, still with her little fixed smile.
"I think we should have had bad weather." "Very likely," said Bernard, laughing.