"Nothing."
Thereupon, softly, timidly, she slipped into the bed. But hardly had she lain down when she raised herself from the pillow on her elbow, and, craning her neck, listened with parted lips. It seemed to her that she could hear slight sounds of footsteps along the gravel path which she had heard in the house in the Boulevard de Villiers. She ran to the window; she saw the Judas tree, the lawn, the garden gate. Knowing what she was yet to see, she sought to hide her face in her hands, but she could not raise her arms, and Chevalier's face rose up before her.
CHAPTER XIII
he had returned home in a burning fever. Robert, after dining en famille, had retired to his attic. His nerves were on edge, and he was badly out of temper as a result of the manner in which Nanteuil had left him.
His shirt and his clothes, laid out on the bed by his valet, seemed to be waiting for him in a domestic and obsequious attitude. He began to dress himself with a somewhat ill-tempered alacrity. He was impatient to leave the house. He opened his round window, listened to the murmur of the city, and saw above the roofs the glow which rose into the sky from the city of Paris. He scented from afar all the amorous flesh gathered, on this winter's night, in the theatres and the great cabarets, the café-concerts and the bars.
Irritated by Félicie's denial of his desires, he had decided to satisfy them elsewhere, and as he was not conscious of any preference he believed that his only difficulty would be to make a choice; but he presently realized that he had no desire for any of the women of his acquaintance, nor did he even feel any desire for an unknown woman. He closed his window, and seated himself before the fire.
It was a coke fire; Madame de Ligny, who wore cloaks costing a thousand pounds, was wont to economize in the matter of her table and her fires. She would not allow wood to be burned in her house.