She did not complete the sentence.
He drew nearer to her, dragging his chair with him.
"You came in at twenty-five minutes past one. It was Ligny who saw you home, I know it. He brought you back in a cab, I heard it stop outside the house."
As she did not reply, he continued:
"Deny it, if you can!"
She remained silent, and he repeated, in an urgent, almost appealing tone:
"Tell me he didn't!"
Had she been so inclined, she might, with a phrase, with a single word, with a tiny movement of head or shoulders, have rendered him perfectly submissive, and almost happy. But she maintained a malicious silence. With compressed lips and a far-off look in her eyes, she seemed as though lost in a dream.
He sighed hoarsely.
"Fool that I was, I didn't think of that! I told myself you would come home, as on other nights, with Madame Doulce, or else alone. If I had only known that you were going to let that fellow see you home!"