“How has she brought him?” thought Thérèse, who knew something of the force of the little notary’s fears. She had brought him by not telling him of the illness at all. There was business waiting for him, and she had told him that after it had rained she should demand his return. In her next letter she said that it had rained, that the fever was diminishing, and that on such a day he was to be at Rue St. Servan. That was all. Nannon, who admitted him, wondered as much as any one. Madame come slowly down the stairs and signed to him to enter the little bureau.
“Zénobie, my angel,” he said, turning to meet her as she followed him. Something, it might have been a grey look on her face, arrested him, “What is the matter?” he said, faltering.
She was a woman, after all,—wicked, cruel, but a woman. Her sin was smiting her sorely; there were those terrible coals of fire scorching, consuming her. And he was her husband, the father of her children. “Oh, Ignace, Ignace, mon ami,” she cried, piteously, stretching out her arms for support, “our little Adolphe!”
“What then?”
“Ah, he suffers so!”
“Suffers! Is he ill?”
“The fever—”
“The fever!” he cried, springing back with one bound against the wall. “The fever is in this house and you let me come?”
She would be patient yet. It was the first shock. He had not realised her words. “He will not know you, Ignace; he is changed and so weak; it is terrible to see him.”
“Keep back!” he cried out, for she was drawing closer; “keep back! You have been nursing him, and now you speak to me! Let me go out into the air. Zénobie, how could you be so imprudent?”