The journey back to the rendezvous in the lorry was noisy and amusing. A score or two of young women, mainly at the minx stage of unattachment, chattered and squabbled, mimicked and raved. Madeleine sat in a corner unheeding. From the rendezvous home she took no account of time, nor place, could not have said by which street she passed, or at what hour she sat down to the Petit’s supper. They were rather nicer than usual to her that night, feeling perhaps that she was a credit to them—for the charitable fête had been discussed from every possible point of view in that quarter of shabby gentility, and every one in the block of flats knew that the Petits’ lodger had taken part. Madame Petit had seen to that. But Madeleine was not responsive—wrapped herself in a brown study—or was it a golden dream?—and retired early to her room.
* * * *
The next day she was the same—quiet, polite, but detached, went to the office as usual, returned at the same hour, replied to questions in monosyllables, went to bed early. Monsieur Petit began to have his suspicions—could it be that the young woman had fallen in love (“made a friend” was the expression he used to his wife) at the fête?
The next morning, as they sipped coffee in their several déshabillés, there came a knock on the door. A message! Monsieur Petit, who took it in, handed it to Madeleine through the two inches that she opened her door. He dressed hurriedly, agog with excitement. The hour at which she usually left for the office passed, and she did not appear. Finally, she did leave her room, at nearly ten o’clock, dressed in her best, carrying her hold-all and a hat-box.
“Good-bye,” she said. “I have left everything in order and the week’s money on the dressing-table.”
Monsieur Petit stammered, “But why?”
Madeleine’s eyes gleamed in such a way that he stood aside to let her pass. “Because I am leaving,” she said. “Make my adieux to Madame. She is occupied, I know!”
And the old man stamped with rage as he heard her firm footfall descending the stone stairs. She was going, taking away a secret with her. Almost as well have taken one of the bronze figures of saints or knights on horseback from the dining-room—that would have been no more a robbery than to take away a secret from that little home where bronze statuettes and curiosity about other people’s affairs were the only luxuries.
At the foot of the stairs Madeleine hailed a taxi and gave an address in the northwestern quarter of the city, from the paper in her hand. Then she folded the paper carefully, and replaced it in her hand-bag with her money and little mirror, as the vehicle bounded down the Boulevard St. Michel. Poor Monsieur Petit was not to be allowed to forget her departure. Three days later the postman brought a letter for Madeleine. Monsieur Petit turned it over and over, his fingers itched. Then something in his memory of superannuated government service stirred. He knew what it was, and told his wife, nodding and glaring malignantly.
“I have sent hundreds in my time. It is the dismissal!”