“You are at home here, dear Madame.”
Zozé obeyed him, throwing him as she passed a passionate look. Gerald joined her after a few minutes. While he lit the candles on the mantelpiece, Mme. Chambannes lay silent, looking up to the ceiling, with a sudden serious expression.
She had a fleeting vision of the two nuns who were walking in the cold, in the grassless garden, with their chaplets in their hands.
That brought her a sensation of shame. Confusedly, an idea came to her mind, showing her another life, as good and even probably better than her own, a life devoted to other aims than to go to bed every afternoon, with candles lit.
But Gerald approached and asked imperiously.
“What are we thinking about?”
Suddenly, like a child caught doing a forbidden thing, Zozé assumed again her happy, lover-like expression.
“We are thinking.... We are thinking that we adore you, wicked Raldo, who made me feel so miserable this morning.”
She stretched out her arms in a gesture of surrender and appeal.
Gerald slipped into her embrace, coaxing her in naughty whispers.