In after days, when Arsène Lupin related this incident in his great struggle with Josephine Balsamo, he could not refrain from laughing.
“Yes,” he would say. “I laugh now as I laughed at the moment; and I remember that for the first time I executed one of those little dances which have often served me since to mark most difficult victories ... and that victory was devilishly difficult.
“In truth I was overjoyed. Clarice free, everything appeared to me to be accomplished. I lit a cigarette, and as Josephine planted herself before me to recall our bargain, I had the bad manners to blow a cloud of smoke right into her face.”
“‘Bounder!’” she muttered.
“The epithet with which I retorted was really disgraceful. My excuse is that my tone was more roguish than coarse. And then—and then—have I any need of excuses? Have I any need to analyze the violent and contradictory feelings with which that woman inspired me? I do not pride myself on my psychology where she was concerned, or of having behaved like a gentleman to her. I loved her and at the same time detested her furiously. And after her attack on Clarice my disgust and contempt had become boundless. I no longer saw even the admirable mask of her beauty, but only that which lay beneath it; and it was a kind of carnivorous beast which suddenly appeared to me as I flung that abominable insult at her in the middle of my pirouette.”
Arsène Lupin could laugh afterwards. Nevertheless it was a dangerous moment, and there is no doubt that for two pins either Josephine or Leonard would have blown his brains out.
She muttered through her closed teeth: “Oh, how I do hate you!”
“Not more than I hate you,” he sneered.
“Bear in mind that Josephine Balsamo has not quite finished with that Clarice of yours,” she retorted in a tone of sinister threatening.