“A little falling out with your wife? I will wager that I have guessed it!”
“That is true; we have had a little dispute.”
“And that makes you unhappy. Ah! you are like me; when I have a dispute with Ernest, it makes me very sad! Luckily it seldom happens, and it doesn’t last long. I should die if it did!”
And the little woman told me about some petty discussions between Ernest and herself, the merest child’s play, which could not interrupt the current of their love for an instant. I had been listening to my little neighbor for an hour, without being bored for an instant; however, I was anxious to know what was going on at home, so I rose.
“I won’t try to detain you,” said Madame Ernest; “your wife is waiting for you, no doubt, and you mustn’t let her get impatient. Ernest will be sorry to have missed you.”
I took leave of my former neighbor and left the house. As I stepped into the street, a woman who was leaning against a post near the porte cochère, seized my arm convulsively, and said:
“You have been alone with her for an hour and a half; her Ernest wasn’t there. I know, for the concierge told me so.”
It was Eugénie. Eugénie, who had followed me, no doubt, and had seen me go into that house, and had remained at the door all the time that I had been with Marguerite.
I was so surprised, so thunderstruck, that I could not answer. After saying these few words, my wife left me and ran swiftly before me. I called her, I tried to overtake her, and succeeded at last. But she would not answer me, she persisted in refusing to take my arm.
And thus we returned home. I tried to have an explanation with my wife, but she locked herself into her bedroom and refused to admit me. A bed was made for me in my study.