She would have remained indefinitely at this stage of intimacy, but he wanted more. And every day he urged her more hotly to give in to his ardent desire.
She resisted, would not hear of it, seemed determined not to give way.
But one evening she said to him casually: “My husband has just gone to Marseilles. He will be away four days.”
Jean de Carmelin threw himself at her feet, imploring her to open her door to him that very night at eleven o'clock. But she would not listen to him, and went home, appearing to be annoyed.
The commandant was in a bad humor all the evening, and the next morning at dawn he went out on the ramparts in a rage, going from one exercise field to the other, dealing out punishment to the officers and men as one might fling stones into a crowd.
On going in to breakfast he found an envelope under his napkin with these four words: “To-night at ten.” And he gave one hundred sous without any reason to the waiter.
The day seemed endless to him. He passed part of it in curling his hair and perfuming himself.
As he was sitting down to the dinner-table another envelope was handed to him, and in it he found the following telegram:
“My Love: Business completed. I return this evening on the nine
o'clock train.
PARISSE.”
The commandant let loose such a vehement oath that the waiter dropped the soup-tureen on the floor.