"Do you play billiards?" she said.
"No, madame, or rather, I play badly...."
He rose again, approached a step or two, and offered me a cigar. I declined.
He turned to Marie. "Won't you smoke, madame?" Fortunately for her, for the tobacconist and the future of my family, she too declined, but she refused in a manner which flattered him.
How dared this man offer a lady a cigarette in a restaurant in the presence of her husband?
Was I a jealous fool? Or was my wife's conduct so scandalous that she excited the desire of the first-comer?
We had a scene in our room, for I regarded her as a somnambulist whom it was my duty to awaken. She was walking straight to her doom, without being in the least aware of it. I gave her an epitome of her sins, old and new, and minutely criticised her conduct.
Silently, with a pale face and dream-shadowed eyes, she listened until I had finished. Then she rose and went down-stairs to bed. But this time—for the first time in my life—I fell so low as to play the spy. I crept down-stairs, found her bedroom door, and looked through the keyhole.
The rich glow of the lamp fell on the children's nurse, who sat opposite the door right in the field of my vision. Marie was pacing the room excitedly, vehemently denouncing my unfounded suspicions; she conducted her case as a criminal conducts his defence.
And yet I was innocent, quite innocent, in spite of all my opportunities to sin....