“Do I disturb you?”
“No; but—” And he admitted that his landlord didn’t like his having “women” there.
“I must speak to you,” she went on.
Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.
“No, no! Down there, in our home!”
And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.
On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She said to him—
“Léon, you will do me a service?”
And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added—
“Listen, I want eight thousand francs.”