“With a woman like you I can do it blind,” cried Fabien, intoxicated by the glance she gave him as much as by the liqueurs des Iles.
“You shall never repent that word, my dear; you shall be peer of France. As for that poor old fellow,” she continued, looking at Rochefide, who was sound asleep, “after to-day I have d-o-n-e with him.”
Fabien caught Madame Schontz around the waist and kissed her with an impulse of fury and joy, in which the double intoxication of wine and love was secondary to ambition.
“Remember, my dear child,” she said, “the respect you ought to show to your wife; don’t play the lover; leave me free to retire from my mud-hole in a proper manner. Poor Couture, who thought himself sure of wealth and a receiver-generalship!”
“I have a horror of that man,” said Fabien; “I wish I might never see him again.”
“I will not receive him any more,” replied Madame Schontz, with a prudish little air. “Now that we have come to an understanding, my Fabien, you must go; it is one o’clock.”
This little scene gave birth in the household of Arthur and Aurelie (so completely happy until now) to a phase of domestic warfare produced in the bosom of all homes by some secret and alien interest in one of the partners. The next day when Arthur awoke he found Madame Schontz as frigid as that class of woman knows how to make herself.
“What happened last night?” he said, as he breakfasted, looking at Aurelie.
“What often happens in Paris,” she replied, “one goes to bed in damp weather and the next morning the pavements are dry and frozen so hard that they are dusty. Do you want a brush?”
“What’s the matter with you, dearest?”