Then he finished his cup of coffee, while Clorinde rolled another cigarette.
'Do you remember,' she inquired, 'my asking you, two years ago, when you were leaving the Council of State, your reason for your sudden whim? You were very reserved then, but surely you can speak out now. Come, between ourselves, tell me frankly if you had a definite plan in your mind.'
'One always has a plan,' he answered shrewdly. 'I felt that I was falling, and preferred to jump down of my own accord.'
'And has your plan been realised? Have events happened just as you anticipated?'
'Well, hardly that. Things never turn out exactly as one calculates. One must be satisfied if one attains one's end somehow.' Then he paused to offer Clorinde a glass of liqueur. 'Which will you have, curaçoa or chartreuse?' She chose chartreuse; and, as Rougon was pouring it out, there came another knock at the door. Clorinde again hid her cigarette with a gesture of impatience, whilst Rougon got up angrily, still holding the decanter. This time it was a letter bearing a large seal which was brought for his inspection. When he had glanced at it, he put it into his pocket.
'Very well,' he said. 'Don't let me be disturbed again.'
When he came back to Clorinde, the young woman was steeping her lips in the chartreuse, slowly sipping it, while glancing upward at him with glistening eyes. There was a tender look upon her face again.
Then, putting down her glass and leaning on the table, she said, in a low voice: 'No, my dear fellow, you will never know all that was done for you.'
Rougon drew his chair closer to hers and, in his turn, rested his elbows on the table. 'Ah, you will tell me all about that now, won't you?' he cried with animation. 'Don't let us have any more mysteries, eh? Tell me all that you yourself did.'
She shook her head, however, while pressing her cigarette between her lips.