And as she leant forward to push the table aside, he roughly kissed her on the neck. She gave a little cry. Then she rose up, quivering, trying to laugh, thinking despite of herself of the other's kisses the night before. But he regretted having given her this cabman's kiss, and on leaving he simply pressed her hand in a friendly manner and promised her that she should have the fifty thousand francs that same evening.
Renée dozed all day in front of the fire. At hours of crisis she experienced a creole-like languor; all her turbulent nature became lazy, chilly, benumbed. She shivered, she needed blazing fires, a suffocating heat, which brought little drops of perspiration to her forehead, and tranquillized her. In this burning atmosphere, in this bath of flames, she scarcely suffered; her pain became like a light dream, a vague oppression, the very ambiguity of which ended by becoming voluptuous. It was thus that, until the evening, she lulled her remorse of the night before, in the red glow of the hearth, opposite a terrible fire, which made the furniture around her crack, and at moments deprived her of the consciousness of being. She was able to dream of Maxime as of an inflamed enjoyment, the rays of which burnt her. She had a nightmare of strange amours, amid flaring logs, on beds heated white-hot. Céleste went to and fro about the room with the calm face of a servant with icy blood. She had orders not to admit anyone; and she even kept the door shut to those inseparables, Adeline d'Espanet and Suzanne Haffner, when they called on returning from lunching together at a villa which they had rented at Saint-Germain. However, towards the evening, when Céleste came to inform her mistress that her master's sister, Madame Sidonie, wished to see her, she received orders to show her in.
As a rule Madame Sidonie only called at dusk. And yet her brother had prevailed upon her to wear silk dresses. But no one knew how it happened, although the silk she wore came fresh from the shop, it never looked new; it was shabby, destitute of sheen, and seemed to be in tatters. She had also consented not to bring her basket to Saccard's house, but by way of compensation her pocket always overflowed with papers. She was interested in Renée, whom she was unable to transform into a reasonable customer resigned to the necessities of life. She visited her regularly, wearing the discreet smile of a doctor who does not like to frighten his patient by telling her the name of her disease. She commiserated her little worries, as if they had been petty ailments which she could cure immediately if the young woman only chose. The latter, who was in one of those moments when one feels the need of being pitied, simply received her to tell her that she had intolerable pains in her head.
"Why, my beauty," muttered Madame Sidonie, as she glided through the shade of the room, "why, you are stifling here! Still your neuralgic pains, eh? It's worry. You take life too much to heart."
"Yes, I have a great deal of worry," replied Renée.
Night was coming on. She had not allowed Céleste to light the lamp. The fire alone shed a grand red glow which fully illuminated her, as she reclined in her white dressing-gown, the lace of which had a pinkish tinge. At the edge of the shade one could just see an end of Madame Sidonie's black dress, and her two crossed hands encased in grey cotton gloves. Her soft voice emerged out of the darkness.
"Still worry about money?" she said, in a tone full of gentleness and pity, just as if she had spoken of the worries of the heart.
Renée lowered her eyelids, and made a gesture of avowal.
"Ah! if my brothers listened to me!" said Madame Sidonie, "we should all be rich. But they shrug their shoulders whenever I speak to them about that debt of three milliards, you know. Still I have good hopes. For the last ten years I have been wanting to make a journey to England, but I have so little time for myself. Anyhow I recently made up my mind to write to London, and I am waiting for the answer."
And as the young woman smiled: