“No, no; do not come here, poor darling—write to me and think of me—I shall be brave.”
It happened that the Opera was not open that evening, and during the short passage from the station to the little house in the Rue de Londres Numa was thinking, while he clutched in his hand that little key which had been a temptation to him more than once for the last fortnight:
“How happy she is going to be!”
Having opened the door and shut it noiselessly, he suddenly found himself in deep obscurity, for the gas had not been lit. This neglect gave to the little house an appearance of mourning and widowhood which flattered him. The thick carpet on the stair softening his tread as he ran up, he reached without being in any way announced the drawing-room hung with Japanese stuffs of the most deliciously false shades just suited to the artificial gold in the tresses of the little girl.
“Who is there?” asked a pretty voice but an angry one from the divan.
“It is I, by Jove!—”
He heard a cry and a sudden springing up, and in the uncertain light of the evening by the white light of her skirts, the little singing girl stood up straight in the greatest fright, whilst handsome Lappara in a crushed but motionless position stood there looking hard at the flowers in the carpet to avoid the eyes of his master. There was no denying the situation.
“Gutter-snipes!” roared Roumestan hoarsely, seized by one of those suffocating rages during which the beast growls inside the man with a desire to tear in pieces and to bite far more than to strike.
Without knowing how it was he found himself outside the house, hurried away by fear of his own frightful wrath. In that very place and at that very hour some days before, his wife, just like himself, had received the blow of treachery, the vulgar and the outrageous wound, but a far more cruel and utterly unmerited one. But he never thought of that for a moment, filled as he was with indignation at the personal injury. No, never had such a villainy been seen beneath the sun! This Lappara whom he loved like a child! This scoundrel of a girl for whose sake he had gone the length of compromising his entire political fortune!
“Gutter-snipes!—gutter-snipes!” he repeated aloud in the empty street as he hurried through a fine, penetrating rain, which in fact calmed him far better than the finest logic.