"You dare to say it? To me, your husband, you dare to say such a thing? You shall ask pardon at once, in the presence of the friend who has heard the insult!" And, as it was obvious she would do nothing of the kind, he went on, without loss of time, "No! I forbid you to apologise—it is vain. There are insults that apologies cannot abate. A husband who is 'contemptible' to his wife is best apart from her—I can find comprehension elsewhere."
I was having a pleasant day—what with one ménage and the other, I was having a pleasant day. There ensued a quarrel the more harrowing from the fact that the recriminations poured from a pair whom I knew to be, at heart, lovers. And as often as I endeavoured to steal out, either Henri or Elise would pounce upon me to confirm some point that did not matter. When I got away at last my need of stimulant was insupportable.
I had, naturally, expected to receive a penitent missive from Jacques that night, and when there was a knocking at my door I did not doubt that he had come to beg forgiveness in person. But it was Henri who flung in, and dropped into a chair.
"Enfin, I go back no more," he groaned.
He took my breath away.
"You are mad," I stuttered. "What? You part from a wife you adore, and who adores you, because of a hasty word? Are you a boy, to behave so wildly? C'est inoui!"
"There are words, and words!" His face twitched and crumpled. "It is because I am not a boy that I see clearly we could never again be happy together. The madness would be to try! To sit, every day, opposite a woman who is thinking me contemptible? Merci! I could not endure it. Every meal, every moment would become a hell."
"Ah, if she were thinking it, really! But she spoke impetuously—she had had much to try her. She had only just left Jacques and——"
"Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, what I owe to that man!" he vociferated. "What everlasting afflictions, his telling me of his accursed pansies! First, it annihilated my prospects, and now it rends me from my wife and children. I shall stipulate that they live with me for half the year; but what of the other half, while they are being taught that the father who loves them so dearly is a contemptible man, disgusting to their mother?" He rocked to and fro. "Also, how am I to make a home for them when they come? I leave the villa to Elise; I cannot afford two establishments—above all, now that I have lost the production by Martime, and may never see a son from work that has occupied me for a year. Malediction on that pot of pansies!"
"Now listen!" He had been to the last degree unreasonable, but he was suffering, and I have a good heart. "I guarantee that this separation will not last a week. I shall have a talk with Elise."