And then she drew closer to the new Jean.
She was still more changed in voice and face. With the languorous, lisping, coaxing inflections of the creole accent she murmured childish words to him, and offered him her lips, still warm from the spahi’s kisses.
But her lover had caught sight of the pale face of Jean Peyral gazing at them through the half-open door, and for all reply he pointed Cora towards him with his hand.
The spahi was standing there, motionless, petrified, fixing his wide, haggard eyes upon them.
When he found that they in their turn were looking at him, he simply stepped back into the shadow. Cora had advanced towards him, with the hideous expression of an animal disturbed in its love-making; this woman frightened him; she was almost near enough to touch him. She shut her door with a furious gesture; shot a bolt behind it ... and all was over.
Through the disguise of the polished élégante the mulatto woman, grand-daughter of a slave, had betrayed herself again with her appalling cynicism. She felt neither remorse, nor fear, nor pity....
The coloured woman and her lover heard a noise as of a body falling heavily to the ground, a loud sinister noise in the silence of the night—and then later, towards morning, a sob behind that door, and a rustling sound as of hands fumbling in the dark.
The spahi had risen to his feet, and feeling his way, he went out into the night.