"Thanks, my dear, but I already know the story. You are of nice composition!"
He again seemed to be on the point of leaving, but he felt a furious itching to tell Renée everything. She had exasperated him with her praises of her husband, and he forgot that he had promised himself not to speak, so as to avoid anything disagreeable.
"What! what do you mean?" she asked.
"Why, that my father has 'done' you in the prettiest way in the world. I really pity you—you are too much of a simpleton!"
And he then cowardly, craftily, related to her what he had heard at Laure's—tasting a secret delight in descending into these infamies. It seemed to him that he was taking his revenge for a vague insult which some one had just addressed to him. With his harlot's temperament he lingered beatifically over this denunciation, over this cruel chatter of what he had overheard behind a door. He spared Renée nothing, neither the money which her husband had lent her usuriously nor that which he meant to steal from her, with the help of ridiculous stories fit to send children to sleep. The young woman listened to him, very pale and with clinched teeth. Standing in front of the chimney-piece, she slightly lowered her head, and looked at the fire. Her night dress, the gown which Maxime had warmed, spread out, revealing the motionless, statue-like whiteness of her limbs.
"I tell all this," continued the young man, "so that you may not seem to be a fool. But you would do wrong to get angry with my father. He isn't wicked. He has his failings like every one. Till to-morrow, eh?"
He still advanced towards the door. But Renée stopped him with a sudden gesture:
"Stay!" she cried, imperiously.
And taking hold of him, drawing him to her, almost seating him on her knees in front of the fire, she kissed him on the lips, saying:
"Ah, well! it would be too stupid to put ourselves to inconvenience now. Don't you know that my head has no longer seemed to belong to me since yesterday, since you wanted to break off? I am like an idiot. At the ball to-night I had a fog before my eyes. It is because I cannot now live quite without you. When you leave me I shall be done for. Don't laugh; I tell you what I feel."