‘A thousand pardons!’ he exclaimed. ‘Pray tell me when you are ready.’
Annette was at the door like a wild cat, but the square-built toe of Laurent’s foot was between it and the jamb. Paul raced up the stairs in his stocking-feet, his boots in his hand. This was not a time for delicacies of sentiment He wished to save Annette. He wished even more to save himself from the misery of a lifelong degradation. He darted into his own room whilst Laurent was still standing like a statue at the door of the adjoining chamber, but reached it barely in time, for on a sudden the door of Annette’s apartment was thrown open, and a voice of imperious sarcasm demanded to know to what Madame Armstrong was indebted for this unexpected honour.
‘It will be well,’ said Laurent in his professional tone, ‘for Madame Armstrong to return to bed.’
He turned the key in the door, and at this Annette sent out shriek on shriek, until the whole corridor seemed to shrill with the outcry.
‘Madame,’ said Laurent in his deep nasal voice, when the clamour died down for a moment, ‘your husband is in the house. He is within hearing. I have his entire authority to speak to you, and I am intent to use it I am here to tell you that you have abused his absence and his confidence, and that on his arrival at Janenne last night I told him the result of my observations during the last four or five weeks.’
Paul, boots in hand, sat on the edge of his own bed, and heard a kind of gasping noise. Then for a moment there was silence until Laurent spoke again.
‘If you will permit, madame,’ he said, ‘this interview may go smoothly. If you choose to be angry, that is your affair. I am authorized by your husband, as your physician, to speak plain truths to you. You need not trouble to deny me, but I see you have already been drinking.’
‘How dare you!’ she flashed out, and Paul heard the stamp of her little naked foot upon the fox-skin rug which lay beside their bed.
‘Madame,’ said Laurent, ‘there is no question of daring or not daring. I have told your husband everything, and he is sitting in the next room at this moment, and hears every word we speak.’
‘Paul!’ she cried, ‘Paul is here? Why hasn’t he been to see me? Why has he no word for me?’