"Are you taking a walk?" she would ask as she passes me. "You had better go out into the air.... Good-night!"
"But shall we not meet again to-day?"
"I think it's late. But as you like."
"Tell me, where have you been?" I would ask, following her into the room.
"Where? To Monte Carlo." She took ten gold coins out of her pocket and said: "Look, my good sir; I have won. That's at roulette."
"Nonsense! As though you would gamble."
"Why not? I am going again to-morrow."
I imagined her with a sick and morbid face, in her condition, tightly laced, standing near the gaming-table in a crowd of cocottes, of old women in their dotage who swarm round the gold like flies round the honey. I remembered she had gone off to Monte Carlo for some reason in secret from me.
"I don't believe you," I said one day. "You wouldn't go there."
"Don't agitate yourself. I can't lose much."