"Percy, how can you talk so? You're simply brutal."
"She might at least break a leg to please you," her husband laughed, "before giving up that plunge."
Blanche made her last dive without the accident that Tate had regarded as indispensable to dramatic effect. Indeed, since knowing that she was to give it up, she seemed to have lost much of her terror of the plunge; she thought of it now chiefly with regret. That night, as she rode home with Jules and Madeleine, she seemed depressed; Jules, too, was even more sullen than he had been for the past two weeks. When they had entered the lodgings and were eating their midnight meal, she said:—
"If to-morrow is pleasant we might take Jeanne for a drive in the country. The air would do her good."
"I can't go," he replied indifferently. "I have something else to do. Besides, it would cost too much. We shall have to be economical now that you're going to be on half-salary."
The next morning Jules left the hotel at eleven o'clock, saying that he shouldn't be back for luncheon. He did not explain where he was going, and Blanche did not question him. She busied herself with Jeanne, and this distracted her till Jeanne fell sound asleep. Then she became a prey to her old melancholy, and for an hour she walked up and down the room, to the bewilderment of Madeleine, who could not understand what the matter was.
"Is Madame suffering with the pain in her back?" Madeleine asked at last.
No, Madame was not suffering. She had not been troubled by the pain for several days; she hoped it would leave her for good now that she had stopped taking the plunge.
"Ah, God be praised that you do that no longer!" Madeleine cried, lifting her withered hands to heaven and rolling her eyes. "It was too terrible. Since that first night in Paris, when I went with you and Monsieur Jules, I never dared to look. It was affreux!"
"But Jules loved it," said Blanche, throwing herself into a chair beside the old woman.