“Hope?” cried René, with a wild laugh. “Hope? I do not know what you mean. What is hope?”
Here Lacaze appeared, smiling and nodding good will.
“Did you think I was dead?” he crowed. “I think that you must have. As a matter of fact, I’ve never been off the ground. Notre Dame was not ready for me. Instead, to tell you the truth, I have been talking business.” He jerked his head at the window directly behind them. “Sitting in there. I became so absorbed that I forgot our engagement. Then I heard your voices, you know, and that reminded me.” He took his seat between them and looked benignantly round. “And now about supper. . . . I think a nice little ragoût, with potatoes en robe de chambre.”
The party was not a success.
René Dudoy pleaded night-work and left at once.
As for Madeleine, she fainted before the ragoût was served.
All things considered, I am inclined to think that when Madame Lacaze deceived the man she loved, because he was not her husband, she made another mistake. But then I am of the earth, earthy. What cannot possibly be denied is that it was a most splendid action. ‘So shines a good deed in a naughty world.’ Probably the trouble was that she did not trust herself. René’s desire to make the word ‘wait’ their watchword was dangerous, because it was sweet. It would have been the thin edge of the wedge. Madeleine was determined to play the game. It was not Lacaze she stood by, but the office he filled. It was not Dudoy she sent packing, but the devil himself. That her lover did not stand in her husband’s shoes was her misfortune. As such, however, it did not affect the case. She was a good girl.
Ten days after that dreadful evening at the Café de la Forêt Noire, the War came with a crash.