But the dressing-room had one delightful corner, and to that corner especially did it owe its fame. In front of the window the folds of the tent parted, and in a kind of alcove, of considerable length but limited breadth, one espied a bath, a tank of pink marble, embedded in the flooring and with its sides--chamfered like those of a large shell--rising to a level with the carpet. One descended into the bath by marble steps. Above the silver taps, shaped like swans' heads, a Venetian mirror, frameless, but with curved edges and a design ground in the crystal, filled the back of the alcove. Renée took a bath of a few minutes' duration every morning, and this bath filled the dressing-room with moisture, with a perfume of fresh, wet flesh for the whole day. At times an open scent bottle, a piece of soap left out of its dish, lent a dash of something stronger to this rather insipid smell. The young woman liked to remain there, almost in a state of nudity, until noon. The round tent itself was also naked. The pink bath, the pink tables and basins, the muslin of the ceiling and the walls, beneath which one seemed to see pink blood coursing, acquired the roundness of flesh, the curves of bare shoulders and bosoms; and, according to the hour of the day, one would liken the apartment to the snowy skin of a child or to the warm skin of a woman. It was one vast nudity. When Renée left her bath her fair form lent but a little more pink to all the rosy flesh of the room.
It was Maxime who undressed her. He understood that kind of thing, and his nimble hands divined pins, and glided round her waist with innate science. He let down her locks, took off her diamonds, and then dressed her hair for the night. And as he mingled jokes and caresses with his duties of chambermaid and hair-dresser, Renée laughed with a greasy stifled laugh, while the silk of her dress-body rustled and her petticoats were loosened one by one. When she saw herself naked, she blew out the tapers of the candelabrum, caught hold of Maxime round the body and all but carried him into the bedroom. The ball had completed her intoxication, and in her fever she was conscious of the previous day which she had spent by the fireside, of that day of ardent torpor and vague and smiling dreams. She still heard Saccard's and Madame Sidonie's voices talking, calling out figures through their noses like lawyers. It was these people who bored her, who drove her to crime. And even now, when in the depths of the vast dark bed she sought for Maxime's lips, she still saw him amid the fire of the day before looking at her with scorching eyes.