This only confirmed her suspicions—he was angry with her about something. A question rose to her lips: 'Has some one been speaking ill of me?' Her diplomacy, however, got the better of her impetuosity. Is not anxiety to disarm suspicion almost a confession in itself? The really innocent are quite callous. Her best course was to find out what René had been doing himself, and what persons he had seen who might have told him something.
'Did you go and see Mademoiselle Rigaud?' she asked, indifferently.
'Yes,' replied René, unable to disguise his embarrassment at the question.
'And has she forgiven poor Claude?' continued Suzanne.
'No,' he rejoined, adding: 'She is a very bad woman,' and in such a bitter tone that Madame Moraines at once guessed part of the truth. The actress must certainly have spoken of her to René. She was again seized with a desire to provoke his confidence, and reflected that the surest means of attaining her object was by intoxicating her lover with passion. She knew how powerless he would be to resist the emotions her caresses would let loose, and at once sealed his lips with a long kiss. By the silent and frenzied ardour with which he returned it Suzanne understood not only that René had suffered, but that she had, to a great extent, been the cause.
In her sweetest voice, and in tones best calculated to reach that heart which had always been open to her, she said, 'What is this trouble that you won't tell me?'
Had she uttered those words at the beginning of their interview he would not have been able to resist them. Amidst tears and kisses, he would have repeated what Colette had said! But alas! it was no longer Colette's words that caused him his present sufferings. What now gave him frightful pain and pierced his heart like a dagger was the fact of having caught her, his idol, in a deliberate lie. Yes, she had lied; this time there was no doubt about it. She had told him that she had been to the theatre with her husband only, and that was false; that she had been sad, and that was false too. Could he reply to her question, which betrayed affectionate concern, by two such clear, explicit, and irrefutable charges? He had not the courage to do it, and got out of the dilemma by repeating his former reply. Suzanne looked at him, and he was obliged to turn his head. She only sighed and said, 'Poor René!' and, as it was almost time for her to go, she pushed her inquiries no further.
'He will tell me all about it next time,' she thought as she went home. In spite of herself she was worried by René's silence. Her love for the poet was sincere, though it was a very different passion from that which she expressed in words. Before all else it was a physical love, but, corrupted as Suzanne was by her life and her surroundings, or perhaps because of this very corruption, the poet's nobility of soul did not fail to impress her. And to such an extent that she imagined their romance would be robbed of half its delight if ever the circle of illusions she had drawn round him were broken. That some one had tried to break this magic circle was evident, and this some one could only be Colette. Everything seemed to prove it. But, on the other hand, what reason could the actress have for hating her, Suzanne, whom she probably did not know, even by name? Colette and Claude were lovers, and here Madame Moraines again came upon the man whom she had distrusted from the first day. If Colette had spoken to René about her, Claude himself must have spoken about her to Colette. At this point her ideas became confused. Larcher had never seen her with René. And the latter, whose word she did not doubt, had told her that he had confided nothing to his friend.
'I am on the wrong track,' thought Suzanne. Argue as she would, she could not convince herself that René was so troubled on account of this pretended newspaper article. There was danger in store for the dear relations that existed between them. She felt it, and the feeling became still more pronounced by what her husband told her on the very next day after her unsatisfactory interview with René.
It was just before seven, and Suzanne was alone in the little salon where she had first cast her net over the poet—a net as finely woven and as yielding as the web in which the spider catches the unwary fly. She had had more callers than usual that afternoon, and Desforges had only just gone. Suddenly Paul came in his wonted noisy way and in high animal spirits. Seizing her by the waist—for she had started up at his boisterous entry—he said, 'Give me a kiss—no, two kisses,' taking one after the other, 'as a reward for having been good.' Seeing the look of interrogation in Suzanne's eyes, he added, 'I have at last paid Madame Komof that visit I've owed her for so long. Whom do you think I met there? Guess—that young poet, René Vincy. I can't understand why Desforges doesn't like him. He's a charming fellow; he pleased me immensely. We had quite a long talk. I told him that you would be very glad to see him. Was I doing right?'