Rochefort, standing by the window, had recovered himself. He guessed quite well that little Javotte had a more than kindly feeling for him, that at a look or a touch she would be his, body and soul, and that she had led him upstairs thinking that his visit was to her. But he was moving under the dominion of a passion that held his mind from Javotte as steadily as centrifugal force holds the moon from the earth.
“From home?” said he. “Has she not been here, then, to-night?”
“Yes, monsieur, she was here till half-past twelve, then she left for the Rue de Valois with Mademoiselle Chon Dubarry.”
“Mademoiselle Dubarry was with her here, then?”
“Yes, monsieur, and they left together.”
He saw at once that the appointment Camille had given him was no lover’s tryst—or, at least, a lover’s tryst with a chaperon attached to it. This pleased him, somehow. Despite the fact that his heart had leaped in him whilst under the dominion of the thought that Camille had flung all discretion to the winds, the revelation of the truth that it was Javotte who was flinging discretion to the winds came to him as a satisfaction, despite the check to his animal nature. Camille was not to be conquered as easily as that.
She had waited for him till half-past twelve, there was some comfort in that thought; the question now arose as to what he should do. It was clearly impossible to knock the Dubarrys up at that hour in the morning. He must wait, and where better than here; he wanted a friend to talk to, and whom could he find better than Javotte?
There was a chair by the bed, and he sat down on the chair, and then what did he do but take Javotte on his knee.
He told her to come and sit on his knee whilst he explained all his worries and troubles, and she came and sat on his knee like a child. She would have resisted him now as a lover, yet there in that bedroom, in that deserted house, she let him caress her without fear and without thought. There was something great about Rochefort at times, when he forgot Rochefort the flaneur and Rochefort the libertine, or perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say there was nothing little about him, and nothing base.