"Then she is not with him?" she cried, springing to her feet, and there was a jubilation in her voice, which she did not attempt to suppress. Maurice made no answer, but in his face was such a mixture of surprise and disconcertion that it was answer enough.
She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, who, in his nervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held it so tightly that it left a furrow in his hand. He was looking into the lamp, and did not at first see that Louise had raised her head again and was contemplating him. When she had succeeded in making him look at her, she sat down on the sofa and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her.
"Come and sit here. I want to speak to you."
But Maurice only shot a quick glance at her, and did not move.
She leaned forward, in her old position. She had pushed the heavy wings of hair up from her forehead, and this, together with her extreme pallor, gave her face a look of febrile intensity.
"Maurice Guest," she said slowly, "do you remember a night last summer, when, by chance, you happened to walk with me, coming home from the theatre?—Or have you perhaps forgotten?"
He shook his head.
"Then do you remember, too, what you said to me? How, since the first time you had seen me—you even knew where that was, I believe—you had thought about me ... thought too much, or words to that effect. Do you remember?"
"Do you think when a man says a thing like that he forgets it?" asked Maurice in a gruff voice. He turned, as he spoke, and looked down on her with a kind of pitying wisdom. "If you knew how often I have reproached myself for it!" he added.
"There was no need for that," she answered, and even smiled a little. "We women never resent having such things said to us—never—though it is supposed we do, and though we must pretend to. But I remember, too, I was in a bad mood that night, and was angry with you, after all. Everything seemed to have gone against me. In the theatre—in ... Oh, no, no!" she cried, as she remembrance of that past night, with its alternations of pain and pleasure, broke over her. "My God!"