"What?"
"Will you be quite candid—quite candid with me?"
"Certainly, dear."
"Well, look here! Have you never been tempted to—to deceive this imbecile, Souris?"
Mme. Leuillet uttered a little "Oh!" in a shamefaced way, and again cuddled her face closer to her husband's chest. But he could see that she was laughing.
He persisted:
"Come now, confess it! He had a head just suited for a cuckold, this blockhead! It would be so funny! This good Souris! Oh! I say, darling, you might tell it to me—only to me!"
He emphasized the words "to me," feeling certain that if she wanted to show any taste when she deceived her husband, he, Leuillet, would have been the man; and he quivered with joy at the expectation of this avowal, sure that if she had not been the virtuous woman she was he could have had her then.
But she did not reply, laughing incessantly as if at the recollection of something infinitely comic.
Leuillet, in his turn, burst out laughing at the notion that he might have made a cuckold of Souris. What a good joke! What a capital bit of fun, to be sure!