ADOLPHE. It's likely you could, but I fear you have become chained to his fate—Sh! Here he comes.
HENRIETTE. How everything repeats itself. The situation is the same, the very words are the same, as when we were expecting you yesterday.
MAURICE. [Enters, pale as death, hollow-eyed, unshaven] Here I am, my dear friends, if this be me. For that last night in a cell changed me into a new sort of being. [Notices HENRIETTE and ADOLPHE.]
ADOLPHE. Sit down and pull yourself together, and then we can talk things over.
MAURICE. [To HENRIETTE] Perhaps I am in the way?
ADOLPHE. Now, don't get bitter.
MAURICE. I have grown bad in these twenty-four hours, and suspicious also, so I guess I'll soon be left to myself. And who wants to keep company with a murderer?
HENRIETTE. But you have been cleared of the charge.
MAURICE. [Picks up a newspaper] By the police, yes, but not by public opinion. Here you see the murderer Maurice Gérard, once a playwright, and his mistress, Henriette Mauclerc—
HENRIETTE. O my mother and my sisters—my mother! Jesus have mercy!