“Do not touch me!... You make me sick.... Do stop your stupid lies.... I saw Germaine.... Do you understand now?” Geral silence caused her rage to break out: “How shameful! What an ignominious affair!... With one of my own friends, with the one I loved best! Bah! you are just as worthless!... You are two bandits, two blackguards! It was natural that you should take to each other....”
Gerald attempted to come closer.
“Come, come, my little Zozé, mon petit Zozo.... Do cry.... This has no importance at all.... Yes, it is true ... and it is not nice.... But it was even more stupid than wicked.... Look here, if the rules that govern decent society allowed me to speak openly....”
“Well, what then?” said Zozé, without repulsing him.
“No!” said Gerald. “It would be disgusting.... You yourself could not wish it.... Be sure, nevertheless, that to-day was the first time and that, at once, on leaving ... do you know what I was saying to myself just now when you jumped on me?... I was telling myself that it was the first and also the last time....”
“Will you swear it to me?” asked Zozé, with a passion that gave her face, which was convulsed with rage, even a stranger look.
“I do!” Gerald replied.
She examined him tenderly, laying her two hands on his shoulders, then pushed him back far from her with an angry thrust: “I do believe you.... You lie.... You have a woma eyes!” She began to cry again. In the half light which came through the blinds, as at the rehearsal of a play, near his mistress who moaned as if she were in the last act of a melodrama, Gerald began to feel too weary to justify himself.
“Come, my little Zozé, mon petit Zozo!” he still murmured from time to time, mechanically, to put himself in countenance.
Nevertheless, the scene lasted too long; it was getting on his nerves. The proud nobleman confusedly rebelled under the love anxiety. Zoz brusque way had really hurt his feelings. He, Gerald de Meuze, allowing himself to be bullied by a mere Mme. Chambannes? No matter how docile, no matter what a charming pal Zozé was, he was beginning almost to regret the women of his own caste. Of course, among them there were a few amoureuses, a few sentimentalists, notorious sticklers who were known as such. But one was duly warned and only ventured into an affair with open eyes! On the other hand, what agreeable natures these people had; how easy and merry they were; and how well they understood life! Ah! neither the young Chitré, for instance, nor Mme. de Baugy, nor even that plump cherub, Mme. Torcieux, would have made so much noise for such a banal little trick! They would have pouted a while; they might have left him. But there would have been neither scandal nor sobs. Two or three sharp words at first—then a firm handshake, to make it up or to part, and that would have been all. For they knew what a man was, what a flirtation or an adventure meant. They were women of the world!...