I am inclined to believe that one of these nights he must also have returned to the flat in Gerando Street, by his favourite chimney, and taken away from it the report, which M. Lecamus had written for the Pneumatic Club, of the operation of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox. Also on one of those nights he must have acquired the sandalwood box inlaid with steel; and since Ambrose believes that he had but little money, it is not improbable that when he acquired it he had his Black Feather.
One evening he came downstairs carrying a box, the sandalwood box, under his arm; and with an air of gloomy satisfaction, he said to Ambrose, "I have finished my literary labours; and I think I will go and see my wife."
"I did not like to speak to you about her," said Ambrose quickly. "Your gloom and your inexplicable behaviour made me afraid that you had some domestic difficulties."
"She is as fond of me as ever!" cried Theophrastus with some heat.
As he left the house, Ambrose said to him, "Be sure you remember me very kindly to Marceline."
Theophrastus said that he would; but to himself he said:
"Marceline will never see me; she must never see me. Not even the Catacombs have torn out my fatal Black Feather. I must not trouble her peace. She shall never see me. But I—I wish to see her once again, from afar, to see if she is happy."
He sobbed in the street.
It is nine o'clock at night, a dark winter's night. Theophrastus mounts the slope at the top of which rise the walls of Azure Waves Villa. With a trembling hand he draws back the bolt of the little door of the garden behind the house. He crosses the garden gently, noiselessly, one hand pressed against his heart, which is beating even more furiously than on the night of the purring of the little violet cat—his good heart, his great heart, still overflowing with love for the wife he wishes to see happy.