She had raised her veil in order to kiss him, and approached him timidly and humbly with the air of a beaten dog.
"How unkind you are to me; how harshly you speak! What have I done to you? You do not know what I have suffered for you!"
He muttered: "Are you going to begin that again?"
She stood near him awaiting a smile, a word of encouragement, to cast herself into his arms, and whispered: "You need not have won me to treat me thus; you might have left me virtuous and happy. Do you remember what you said to me in the church and how you forced me to enter this house? And now this is the way you speak to me, receive me! My God, my God, how you maltreat me!"
He stamped his foot and said violently: "Enough, be silent! I can never see you a moment without hearing that refrain. You were mature when you gave yourself to me. I am much obliged to you; I am infinitely grateful, but I need not be tied to your apron-strings until I die! You have a husband and I a wife. Neither of us is free; it was all a caprice, and now it is at an end!"
She said: "How brutal you are, how coarse and villainous! No, I was no longer a young girl, but I had never loved, never wavered in my dignity."
He interrupted her: "I know it, you have told me that twenty times; but you have had two children."
She drew back as if she had been struck: "Oh, Georges!" And pressing her hands to her heart, she burst into tears.
When she began to weep, he took his hat: "Ah, you are crying again! Good evening! Is it for this that you sent for me?"
She took a step forward in order to bar the way, and drawing a handkerchief from her pocket she wiped her eyes. Her voice grew steadier: "No, I came to—to give you—political news—to give you the means of earning fifty thousand francs—or even more if you wish to."