"No one, monsieur."
"Very well, madame; I came too early to-day; that will teach me a lesson for another time."
And Adhémar seized his hat and rushed from the room; while Nathalie, having at first started to detain him, overcame the impulse to do so.
"She has certainly had a visitor who smoked," said Adhémar to himself, as he went away, "but she won't admit it. I don't claim that she shouldn't receive anyone at all; but if that was an innocent visit, she wouldn't have denied it. So she evidently has mysteries—secrets from me. Therefore, she deceives me; she's no better than the rest. Ah, me! I ought to have expected it! It's all over; I will never go to her house again!"
All day long, the jealous wretch kept repeating those words: "I will never go to her house again!" And he rushed hither and thither, to cafés and theatres and parties; did all that he could to divert his thoughts, and did not succeed. The next day he was very much depressed, and said to himself as he went out:
"I will not go to see her, that is sure! What a shame! I loved her so dearly—more than I have ever before loved a woman! That makes her treachery the more outrageous. Ah! I was very wise to make up my mind that I would never care for any woman again."
Musing thus as he walked, Adhémar arrived in front of the house where Madame Dermont lived.
"So much for habit!" he thought. "I came here without knowing it. But I won't go in. Still, I may as well walk in this neighborhood as anywhere. I'll look at her windows; that will give me something to think about."
For two hours he walked up and down in front of the house, gazing at Nathalie's windows, walking rapidly away when he fancied that he saw someone through the glass, and sighing when he saw no one. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder; it was one of his colleagues, who said to him:
"What on earth are you doing here, Adhémar? Are you on the lookout for a scene or a dénouement?"