Berthe laughed enigmatically, ‘I think ’tis a matter of indifference to them, so long as they get the sous.’
‘But don’t you think it might accord well with their humour if they are as wicked as you say they are?’
Part of the truth suddenly flashed on Berthe, and she winked and chuckled violently. ‘Oh, Mademoiselle is sly!’ she cried admiringly. ‘I think it would please them not a little were Mademoiselle to jilt a poor man that she might wed with a rich one, for then there would be gold for them instead of copper!’
And Madeleine, having forced her oracle into giving her a more or less satisfactory answer, fled from the room in dread of Berthe mentioning the name of the Chevalier de Méré and thereby spoiling the oracular answer.
She called Jacques to her room at once, and found herself—she who had such a horror of hurting the feelings of her neighbours that she would let a thief cut her purse-strings rather than that he should know that she knew he was a thief—telling him without a tremor that his personality was obnoxious to her, his addresses still more so, and that she wanted to end their relationship once and for all. Jacques listened in perfect silence. At her first words he had gone white and then flushed the angry red of wounded vanity, and then once more had turned white. When she had finished, he said in a voice of icy coldness,—
‘Mademoiselle, you have an admirable clearness of exposition; rest assured I shall not again annoy you with my addresses—or my presence,’ and with his head very high he left the room.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE END OF THE ‘ROMAN’
Madeleine listened to Jacques’s light footsteps going down the long flight of stairs, and knew that he had gone for ever. With this knowledge came a sense of peace she had not known for days, and one of sacramental purity, such as must have filled the souls of pious Athenians when at the Thargelia the Pharmakoi were expelled from the city.
Yes, just in time she had discovered the true moral of the Sapphic Ode and the story of Nausicaa, to wit, that the gods will break their promises if man fails to perform the necessary rites and ceremonies. Ritually, her affairs were in exquisite order. By her sacrilegious Communion (she still shuddered at the thought of it) she had consolidated her cult for the powerful Saint Magdalene, and at the same time cut out of her heart the brand of God, by which in the fullness of time the ravishing Angel would have discovered his victim. And, finally, by her dismissal of Jacques, she had rid herself of a most malign miasma. The wax of reality lay before her, smooth and white and ready for her moulding. All she had to do now was to sparkle, and, automatically, she would arouse the passion of Admiration.