How I spent the rest of the day I do not know; I walked, smoked, talked, but what I said, whom I met, I had utterly forgotten by ten o’clock in the evening.
All I remember is that when I returned home, I spent three hours over my toilet, and I looked at my watch and my clock a hundred times, which unfortunately both pointed to the same hour.
When it struck half past ten, I said to myself that it was time to go.
I lived at that time in the Rue de Provence; I followed the Rue du Mont-Blanc, crossed the Boulevard, went up the Rue Louis-le-Grand, the Rue de Port-Mahon, and the Rue d’Antin. I looked up at Marguerite’s windows. There was a light. I rang. I asked the porter if Mlle. Gautier was at home. He replied that she never came in before eleven or a quarter past eleven. I looked at my watch. I intended to come quite slowly, and I had come in five minutes from the Rue de Provence to the Rue d’Antin.
I walked to and fro in the street; there are no shops, and at that hour it is quite deserted. In half an hour’s time Marguerite arrived. She looked around her as she got down from her coupé, as if she were looking for some one. The carriage drove off; the stables were not at the house. Just as Marguerite was going to ring, I went up to her and said, “Good-evening.”
“Ah, it is you,” she said, in a tone that by no means reassured me as to her pleasure in seeing me.
“Did you not promise me that I might come and see you to-day?”
“Quite right. I had forgotten.”
This word upset all the reflections I had had during the day. Nevertheless, I was beginning to get used to her ways, and I did not leave her, as I should certainly have done once. We entered. Nanine had already opened the door.
“Has Prudence come?” said Marguerite.