"Mon enfant, your husband would not grudge you the little holiday without him, one may be sure."
It was like being barred from Eden. "And the ermine cloak," she faltered, "could I take the ermine cloak?"
The tempter smiled. "One cannot doubt that, among fourteen trunks, there would be room for the ermine cloak," he told her suavely.
One November evening when Floromond came in, his wife was not there. He supposed she had been detained in the show-room—until he groped for a match; and then, in the dark, his hand touched an envelope, stuck in the box. He trembled so heavily that, before he could light the lamp, he seemed to be falling through an eternity of fear.
He read: "I am leaving you because I am frivolous and contemptible. I dare not entreat your pardon. But I shall never make you wretched any more...."
When he noticed things again, from the chair in which he crouched, he found that the night had passed and daylight filled the room. He was shuddering with cold. And he got feebly up, and wavered towards the bed.
"She did not ponder her words," babbled the aunt, who came to him aghast—"she will return to you. When the two months are over and she is back in Paris, you will see!"
"She pondered longer than you surmise, and she will never return to me," he said. "And what is more, a man with nothing to offer can never presume to seek her. No, I have done with illusions—she will be no nearer to me in Paris than in Monte Carlo; Frisonnette's Paris and mine henceforth will be different worlds."
Floromond lived, without Frisonnette, among the clothes that she had left behind; the dainty things that she had prized had been abandoned now that she was to be decked in masterpieces. They hung ownerless, the peignoir, and tricot, and dresses—the pink, and the mauve, and the plaid—gathering the dust, and speaking of her to him always.