Maxime shrugged his shoulders.
"Why my father himself, who considers you nicely formed, and talked to me about your hips."
He had allowed a little vexation to show itself while saying this; but he now began walking about again, continuing in a chiding but friendly voice, between two puffs of smoke:
"Really now I don't understand you. You are a singular woman. It was your fault if I was rude yesterday. If you had told me that it was my father, I should have gone off quietly, you understand? I have no right—But you go and name Monsieur de Saffré to me!"
She was sobbing, with her hands over her face. He drew near, knelt down before her, and forcibly drew her hands aside.
"Come, tell me why you named Monsieur de Saffré?" he said.
Then, still averting her head, she answered in a low tone, amid her tears:
"I thought that you would leave me, if you knew that your father—"
He rose to his feet, took up his cigar which he had laid on a corner of the mantelshelf, and contented himself with muttering: "You are very funny, really!"
She no longer cried. The flames of the grate and the fire of her cheeks were drying her tears. Her astonishment at seeing Maxime so calm in presence of a revelation which, she had thought, was bound to crush him, made her forget her shame. She looked at him as he walked about; she listened to him speaking, as if she had been in a dream. Without abandoning his cigar, he repeated to her that she was unreasonable, that it was quite natural she should have connection with her husband, and that he really could not think of resenting it. But to go and confess that she had a lover when it was not true! And he constantly returned to that point, which he could not understand, and which seemed really monstrous to him. He talked about women's "mad imaginations."