This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his wife's sleeping apartment, he muttered:
"She'll have to open that door when you've gone."
I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going to beat her.
He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:
"Pauline!"
A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from behind the partition:
"Eh! what?"
"Didn't you hear me coming in?"
"No, I was asleep! Let me rest."
"Open the door!"