Luncheon was hurried and silent. In the drawing-room to which the two men returned together, Albert more and more absorbed and bitter, at last giving full vent to the torrent of his impressions, admitted as if to himself.
"Yes, she has changed a great deal."
He added:
"Does she still refuse the allowance that I have sent to my solicitor every month?"
"Yes."
"I ought to have demanded a promise of acceptance from her. She is depriving me of helping to support my own children and without right. It is unfair."
Philippe, whose passion had purified itself in following the brave efforts of Elizabeth, and who was still under the spell of Madame Derize's last wishes, generously desired to bring about a reconciliation and continued the praises which Fanchette had begun. He told of the lives of the two women at Grenoble and Saint Martin, their intimacy, the sacred devotion of the younger, who had changed the last year of the dead woman's life. In vain he was interrupted sharply with "I know, I know."
"No, you cannot know," he concluded, out of patience.
Albert, who had begun his walk again, stopped suddenly. His face wore that expression which it took on in anger, as his former violence overcame him again in the face of unbearable contradiction. However, he tried to master himself, and the insinuation which followed conveyed only wounding insolence:
"Then it was true what they wrote from Grenoble."