"That Chésy could become his superintendent," interrupted Ely, who could not keep back a smile at her friend's naïveté. "I wouldn't wish such a fate for my worst enemy.—If things are really at such a point that your husband has to seek a position, there is only one man who can help him."
As she spoke, she saw Yvonne's infantile visage, which had brightened for a moment under the influence of her bright welcome, become again overclouded, and her look betrayed a feeling of pain and disgust.
"Yes," went on Ely, "there is only one man, and it is Dickie Marsh."
"The Commodore!" said Madame de Chésy, with manifest astonishment.
Then, shaking her head again, with her mouth closed in a bitter smile, she added:—
"No, I know now too well the value of these men's friendships and the price they place upon their services. I have only been ruined a short time, and already some one,"—she hesitated a second,—"yes, some one has offered me wealth.—Ah! dear Ely,"—and she clasped her hands over her eyes, blushing with indignation,—"if I would become his mistress. You do not know, you cannot know, what a woman feels when she suddenly discovers that for months and months she has been tracked and waited for by a man whom she thought her friend, like an animal tracked by a hunter.—Every familiarity she has allowed, without thinking, because she saw no harm in it, the little coquettishness that she has innocently shown, the intimacy that she has not guarded against, all return to her with shame, with sickening shame. The vile cleverness that was hidden under the comedy of friendliness she has not seen, and now it is as clear as daylight. She has not been culpable, and yet it seems as though she had been. I will never suffer another such affront! Marsh would make me the same ignoble proposition that the other did.—Oh! it is horrible, shameful!"
She had spoken no name. But by her trembling, by her look of outraged innocence, Madame de Carlsberg could imagine the scene that had taken place, that very morning, perhaps, between the good, if imprudent, creature and Brion, vile and despicable as he was. She understood for the second time that the Parisienne was really pure and innocent and that she was being initiated in the brutalities of life. There was something pathetic, something that was heartbreaking, in her remorse, her scruples, the sudden revulsion of a soul that had remained naïve by irrealism.
Threatened though she was by another man, Ely felt her soul go out toward the unhappy child. She determined to speak to her about Marsh, to tell her of the conversation on the yacht, of the promise made by the American, when, with that acuity of the senses that is awakened by our inquietude at certain moments, she heard the door of the outer salon open.
"It is Olivier," she said to herself.
At the same time, with instinctive superstition, she looked at the still trembling Yvonne and added mentally:—