‘“Immediately,” he answered, and was gone.
‘As the door closed, a furious passion of hate burned up in me for this woman who had ruined my life—who had not only ruined it, but who was still blocking out any chance of happiness I might have had. And also I furiously and jealously hated Felix for being the cause, however innocent, of my loss. And then suddenly I felt as if—perhaps I should say I felt that—a devil had entered and taken possession of me. I became deadly cold and I had the strange feeling that I myself was not really there, but that I was watching some one else. I slipped out my key, noiselessly opened the door, and followed my wife into the drawing-room. Her calm, nonchalant walk across the room roused me to still wilder fury. How well I knew her every motion. This was the way she would have turned to greet me when I arrived from the works, with cold politeness—when it might have been so different. . . .
‘She reached her chair in the corner of the room and turned to sit down. As she did so she saw me. She gave a little scream.
‘“Raoul, how you startled me,” she cried. “Have you just arrived?”
‘I threw off my hat and she saw my face.
‘“Raoul,” she cried again, “what’s the matter? Why do you look like that?”
‘I stood and looked at her. Outwardly I was calm, inwardly my blood whirled like molten metal through my veins and my mind was a seething fire.
‘“Nothing really,” I said, and some one else seemed to be speaking in a voice I had never heard before, a hoarse, horrible voice. “Only a mere trifle. Only Madame entertaining her lover after her husband has come home.”
‘She staggered back as if from a blow and collapsed into her chair, and turned her now pallid face to me.
‘“Oh!” she cried in a trembling, choking voice. “Raoul, it’s not true! It’s not true, Raoul, I swear it! Don’t you believe me, Raoul?”