'Quite right,' replied Suzanne; 'and who else was there?'
Whilst her husband was reciting a list of familiar names she was thinking: 'What reason had René for going to Madame Komof's?' This was the first call of that kind he had made since the beginning of their attachment. He had so often said to his mistress: 'I want only you and my work.' It had been his custom during the past few months to give her a full account not only of what he had done, but of what he was going to do, and yet he had said nothing of this visit, so entirely out of keeping with his present mode of life. And he had met Paul, who had no doubt proved himself the very opposite of what his wife had described him to be.
Suzanne felt quite out of temper with the kindhearted fellow who had been guilty of calling on the Comtesse on the same day as the poet, and she said, in an almost petulant tone: 'I am sure you haven't written to Crucé for that Alençon.'
'I have written,' replied Moraines, with an air of triumph, 'and you shall have it.' Crucé, who acted as a sort of private art broker, had spoken to Suzanne about some old lace, and it was this she wished her husband to get her. From time to time she would ask him for something that she could show her friends and say, 'Paul is so good to me. This a present he brought me only the other day.' She would forget to add that the money for such presents generally came from Desforges—in an indirect way, it is true. Although the Baron seldom troubled himself with business matters except so far as the careful investment of his capital necessitated, he often had opportunities for speculating with almost absolute safety, and always gave Moraines a chance of doing the same. The Compagnie du Nord, of which Desforges was a director, had recently taken over a local line that was on the brink of ruin. Paul had succeeded in making a profit of thirty thousand francs by purchasing some shares at the right moment, and it was out of this profit that Suzanne was going to have her lace. This little business operation, too, had indirectly led to a somewhat strange scene between René and his mistress.
In the course of conversation she had asked him how much the 'Sigisbée' had produced, adding, 'What have you done with all that money?'
'I don't know,' René had replied, with a laugh. 'My sister bought me some stock with the first few thousand francs, and I have kept the rest in my drawer.' 'Will you let me talk to you like a sister, too?' she had said. 'A friend of ours is a director of the Compagnie du Nord, and he has given us a valuable tip. Do you promise to keep it a secret?' Thereupon she had explained to him how to get hold of some shares. 'Give your orders to-morrow, and you can make as much as you like.'
'Hold your tongue!' René had said, putting his hand over her mouth. 'I know it's very kind of you to talk like that, but I can't allow you to give me that sort of information. I should feel ashamed of myself.'
He had spoken so seriously that Suzanne had not dared to press the matter, though his scruples had appeared to her somewhat ridiculous. But then, if he had not been so unsophisticated and such a gobeur, as she called him in that horrible Parisian slang that spares not even the highest forms of sentiment, would she have been so fond of him? And yet it was this very innocence of soul that she feared. If ever he should get to hear what her life was really like, how his noble heart would turn against her, and how incompatible it would be with his high sense of honour ever to forgive her! A hint had, nevertheless, somehow reached him. In going over the different signs of danger that she had noticed one after another—René's trouble, his anger against Colette Rigaud, his reticence and his unexpected visit to Madame Komof—Suzanne said to herself: 'I made a mistake in not getting him to explain at once.'
When, therefore, she made her appearance in the Rue des Dames a few days later she was fully determined not to fall into the same error again. She saw at once that the poet was even more distressed than before, though she pretended not to notice this distress nor the cool manner in which he received her first kiss. With a sad smile she said to him:
'It was very silly of you, dear, not to tell me you were about to call on the Comtesse. I would have taken care that you were spared a meeting which must have been very painful?'