"Hush!" said Nancy again. Then she sat on a chair near the child's bed, and put her face down again in the mosquito-netting.
Aldo stood about the room for a time. He called her name twice, but she did not answer. Then he went upstairs to his little room feeling injured.
IV
Early next morning Aldo went out to buy a doll for Anne-Marie. He got it at the Condamine, where things are cheaper. It went to his heart to spend seven francs fifty centimes—a mise and a half—but the cheaper ones were really too hideous to buy peace with. For one mad moment he thought of buying a doll with real eyelashes that cost twenty-eight francs. But considerations of economy were stronger than his fears, and he took the one for seven francs fifty, whose painted eyelashes remained irrelevantly at the top of the eyelids even when they were closed.
Anne-Marie was delighted.
Nancy was a pale and chilly statue. Aldo sent Anne-Marie and the Condamine doll to play in the garden, while he in the salon de lecture explained.
The systems were rank and rotten. All of them. Rank—and—rotten. Grimaux, the croupier, had told him so. There was only one way of winning, and that was——
"I know all that," said Nancy. "Who was that woman?"
Aldo raised reproachful, nocturnal eyes to her face. She looked smaller than usual, but very stern.