All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri’s little den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him; he was not even smoking.
“Am I disturbing you?” she asked. “I should like to speak to you for a moment....”
He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that, it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was spoiling for a scene ... about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice, because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant; and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note, the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set, as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:
“What is it now?” he asked, roughly.
She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And she made an effort to clear her hoarse voice and to speak calmly ... so that he might know:
“Oh,” she began, reflectively, wishing to show him at once that she had not come to make reproaches, that she did not wish to make a scene, “I wanted to speak to you ... to ask your advice....”
Her voice, now under control, sounded soft, as she wished it; and he was astonished for a second, just remembered, almost unconsciously, that she had not been so quick-tempered lately, that in fact they had not had a scene for weeks. Still he continued suspicious: she, who never asked his advice! And he echoed:
“To ask my advice?”
“Yes,” she went on, in that same calm, reflective tone, with a certain constraint, “I wanted to tell you—what do you think?—Vreeswijck stayed talking to me for a long time yesterday evening ... and he wanted absolutely....”
“Wanted what?”