"Yes; I have just written an article on Algeria, in connection with it."
"What?"
"You know, the first we wrote together, 'The Recollections of a Chasseur d'Afrique,' revised and corrected for the occasion."
She smiled, saying: "Ah, that is very good!" Then, after a few moments' reflection, she continued: "I was thinking—that continuation you were to have written then, and that you—put off. We might set to work on it now. It would make a nice series, and very appropriate to the situation."
He replied, sitting down to table: "Exactly, and there is nothing in the way of it now that cuckold of a Forestier is dead."
She said quietly, in a dry and hurt tone: "That joke is more than out of place, and I beg of you to put an end to it. It has lasted too long already."
He was about to make an ironical answer, when a telegram was brought him, containing these words: "I had lost my senses. Forgive me, and come at four o'clock to-morrow to the Parc Monceau."
He understood, and with heart suddenly filled with joy, he said to his wife, as he slipped the message into his pocket: "I will not do so any more, darling; it was stupid, I admit."
And he began his dinner. While eating he kept repeating to himself the words: "I had lost my senses. Forgive me, and come at four o'clock to-morrow to the Parc Monceau." So she was yielding. That meant: "I surrender, I am yours when you like and where you like." He began to laugh, and Madeleine asked: "What is it?"
"Nothing," he answered; "I was thinking of a priest I met just now, and who had a very comical mug."