Pauline, still choking with emotion, and exasperated at this hindrance to her progress, could not at first answer.
'Let me pass!' she at last managed to stammer, making on angry gesture, before which Madame Chanteau quailed. Then, with another bound she rushed up to the second floor, while her aunt, rooted to the spot, threw up her arms, but spoke no word. Pauline was possessed by one of those stormy fits of rebellion which broke out amidst all the gentle gaiety of her nature, and which, even when she was a mere child, had afterwards left her in a prostrate fainting condition. For some years past she believed that she had cured herself of them. But an impulse of jealousy had just thrilled her so violently that she could not have restrained herself without shattering herself entirely.
When she reached Lazare's door on the top floor, she threw herself against it. The key was bent by her impetuous onset, and the door clattered back against the wall. And the sight she then beheld brought her indignation to a climax. Lazare was clasping Louise in his arms against the wardrobe and raining kisses on her chin and neck, she passive, half-fainting, unable to resist his embrace. They had begun, no doubt, in mere sport, but the sport seemed likely to have a disastrous ending. At Pauline's appearance there was a moment of stupefaction. They all three looked at each other. Then, at last, Pauline burst out:
'Oh! you hussy! you hussy!'
It was the girl's treason that angered her more than anything. With a scornful gesture she pushed Lazare aside, as though he were a child of whose pitiful weakness she was well aware. But this girl, her own familiar friend, had stolen her husband from her while she was busy nursing a sick man down below! She caught her by the shoulders, shook her, and was scarcely able to keep from striking her.
'What do you mean by this? Tell me! You have been behaving infamously, shamelessly! Do you hear me?'
Then Louise, still in a state of stupor, and with her eyes wandering vacantly, stammered:
'He held me; I could not get away.'
'He! Why, he would have burst into tears if you had simply pushed him with your little finger!'
The sight of the room itself increased her anger—that room where she and Lazare had loved each other, where she, too, had felt her blood pulse more quickly through her veins at the warm touch of the young man's breath. What should she do to this girl to satisfy her vengeance?