The hangings were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among bluish reeds—produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures floating before one’s languid eyes. The lowered blinds, the matting on the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside, produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets on the shore.
Sidonie sat down as soon as she entered the room, pushing aside her long white skirt, which sank like a mass of snow at the foot of the divan; and with sparkling eyes and a smile playing about her lips, bending her little head slightly, its saucy coquettishness heightened by the bow of ribbon on the side, she waited.
Frantz, pale as death, remained standing, looking about the room. After a moment he began:
“I congratulate you, Madame; you understand how to make yourself comfortable.”
And in the next breath, as if he were afraid that the conversation, beginning at such a distance, would not arrive quickly enough at the point to which he intended to lead it, he added brutally:
“To whom do you owe this magnificence, to your lover or your husband?”
Without moving from the divan, without even raising her eyes to his, she answered:
“To both.”
He was a little disconcerted by such self-possession.
“Then you confess that that man is your lover?”