“I hope so. Good night.”
I left that infernal abode, and went home to bed.
CHAPTER XIII
The End of the Story Stranger Than the Beginning
At eight o’clock the next morning Jarbe told me that the Charpillon wanted to see me, and that she had sent away her chairmen.
“Tell her that I can’t see her.”
But I had hardly spoken when she came in, and Jarbe went out. I addressed her with the utmost calmness, and begged her to give me back the two bills of exchange I had placed in her hands the night before.
“I haven’t got them about me; but why do you want me to return them to you?”
At this question I could contain myself no longer, and launched a storm of abuse at her. It was an explosion which relieved nature, and ended with an involuntary shower of tears. My infamous seductress stood as calmly as Innocence itself; and when I was so choked with sobs that I could not utter a word, she said she had only been cruel because her mother had made her swear an oath never to give herself to anyone in her own house, and that she had only come now to convince me of her love, to give herself to me without reserve, and never to leave me any more if I wished it.