"Now," said Laurent to himself, hastily leaving the narrow, deserted street, and returning to the noisy roadway of the Champs-Elysées, "now my mind is at rest. She has a lover! After all, she was under no obligation to tell me of it! But she needn't have talked to me on all occasions in a way to make me think that she did not and never intended to belong to any man. She is like all women: the longing to lie supersedes all else. What difference does it make to me? And yet I would never have believed it. Indeed, I must have been a little cracked over her without realizing it, since I went there and played the spy, the most dastardly of all trades, except when one is driven to it by jealousy! I cannot regret it very much; it saves me from great unhappiness and from a great imposition: that of desiring a woman who has nothing that makes her desirable above other women, not even sincerity."
Laurent stopped an empty cab that was passing, and went to Montmorency. He proposed to pass a week there, and not to darken Thérèse's door for a fortnight. But he remained in the country only forty-eight hours, and arrived at Thérèse's cottage on the evening of the third day, simultaneously with Monsieur Richard Palmer.
"Ah!" said the American, offering him his hand, "I am very glad to see you!"
Laurent could not avoid taking the proffered hand; but he could not refrain from asking Monsieur Palmer why he was so glad to see him.
The foreigner paid no heed to the artist's somewhat impertinent tone.
"I am glad because I am fond of you," he replied, with irresistible cordiality, "and I am fond of you because I have a great admiration for you!"
"What! are you here?" said Thérèse, surprised to see Laurent. "I had given you up for this evening."
And it seemed to the young man that there was an unfamiliar coolness in the tone in which those simple words were spoken.
"Indeed!" he replied in an undertone, "you had become reconciled to it very readily, and I fear that I am disturbing a delightful tête-à-tête."
"That is the more cruel of you," she rejoined in the same playful tone, "because you seemed disposed to arrange it for me."