His mistress! His mistress!
She repeated this name with increasing rage, reiterating it, inwardly digesting it, as if it were something terribly bitter. His mistress, that lovely, insolent creature! Yes, very lovely, but manifestly terrible and capable of driving a feeble being like Vaudrey to commit every folly, nay, worse, infamy.
"And it is such women that are loved! Ah! Idiots! idiots that we are!"
The first part of the concert was terminating. Happily, too, for Adrienne was choking. The minister must, as a matter of politeness, express his thanks to the cantatrices from the Opéra, and to the actresses from the Comédie Française, the artistes whose names appeared on the programme. Vaudrey was obliged to pass the rows of chairs in order to reach the little salon behind the stage, which served as a foyer. Adrienne saw him coming to her side, and looking very pale, though he made an effort to smile. He was uncomfortable and anxious. In passing before Marianne, he tried to look aside, but Mademoiselle Kayser stopped him in spite of himself, by slightly extending her foot and smiling at him, when he turned toward her, with a prolonged, interested and strange expression.
Adrienne felt that she was about to faint. She took a few tottering steps out of the salon, then she stopped as if her head were swimming. Some one was on hand to support her. She felt that a hand was holding her arm, she heard some one whisper in her ear:
"It is too much, is it not?"
She recognized Lissac's voice.
Guy looked at her for a moment, quite prepared for this great increase of suffering.
"Take me away," she murmured. "I can bear no more!—I can bear no more!"