A sudden motion caused her to open them again. The carriage turned into the rue Godot-de Mauroi. Zozé was barely in time to knock on the window pane. The driver stopped outside No. 9. From there, she could see diagonally No. 12 bis, an old house, whose gray façade merged into similar ones. But, above the door, two yellow signs proclaimed that small apartments were to let.
“Here it is!” thought Zozé with a distressful sigh. She looked at her watch and saw that it was five minutes after eleven. She put up the windows so as to hide her face behind their mock transparency. She huddled in the left-hand corner, aggressively facing No. 12 bis and began to look.
A quarter of an hour passed. Green-vegetable-hawkers cried their wares and pushed their heavy barrows in the silent, half-deserted street. At intervals, the cab-horse shook himself with a bored shiver that rocked the shafts; or the driver made a movement which set the harness rustling and the wood creaking. Zozé perceived these noises no more clearly than she noticed the neighboring shop, the passers-by who paused to look at her or the saddler opposite, whose face was bent down over his work behind a glass window. Invisible blinkers kept her eyes fastened ahead, as did the anxious attention which kept her body stiff, toward the small square of stones where the lovers would appear.
What were they saying now to each other, in what abject caresses were they swooning, on what floor were they, near which of these windows? Her memories helped her somewhat to visualize Gerald. But the woman escaped her. She guessed all of the perfidy, her waist, her nakedness, her breast and her arms, she could see everything but the head, all but the face! She was as one struggling in one of those terrible nightmares, when the features of one of the participants are dissolved and vanish as soon as one attempts to distinguish them.
A nearby clock announced the half hour. The delay of the two accomplices exasperated Zozé even more than their betrayal. Unconsciously, she called them forth in a vehement, and silent prayer: “Come! Come on! Hasten!” as one calls belated friends to an urgent appointment.
A sudden idea upset her. The letter might have lied! She might be the victim of a hoax! But no joy came in the wake of this idea. She could not accept its plausibility. Her suspicions had wandered in every direction, and now she could not force them back. It was as if they scented their prey and were anxious for the imminent running down of the quarry.
Again, she consulted her watch. “Quarter of twelve! Very well.... At twelve, l go in and ask the concierge!...” Then she looked up again; her head fell back tragically.
There, in front of the arch of No. 12 bis, a woman, dressed in a gray serge costume, was calling a cab; in spite of the white veil she wore, the thick, flowery embroidery, Zozé recognized a well-known profile, a plane-like jaw, her friend, her best friend, Germaine de Marquesse herself!
Now the carriage opposite started. It almost touched the wheels of her own. The hood was down and, under it, Germaine was arched in a resolute pose, one hand stretched on each end of her sunshade which lay across her knees. The wretch! It was indeed she! And she was not taking any notice of anything, this Germaine, so blinded was she with satisfaction!... Oh! the little Mouzarkhi never could have believed that the pleasure of surprising these two could be so heavy with sorrow! She almost fainted, seized with sudden cowardice, as would a woman on the operating table, at the first contact of the steel. What would the second hurt be, if the first one left her feeling so terribly rent?
But she had no time to change her mind; Gerald appeared outside the accursed house.