"I need no help from you. It was a momentary, bodily weakness. It is enough for me to have come here, without staying. I shall not forget the depths I have lowered myself to through you. In the Rue d'Assas you will never again find a wife, but the mother alone of your daughter. Farewell or not, as it pleases you."
And with a commanding gesture, forbidding him to accompany her, she went from the room.
CHAPTER V.
DIVORCE—SEPARATION.
For Mme. Paul Meyrin the days that followed this horrible scene in the Boulevard Clichy were very wretched.
Returning home in an indescribable state of sorrow and abasement, wounded in her pride as much as in her love, blushing at not having withstood with greater dignity the blow that had struck her, she refused to see anybody, even Mme. Daubrel and Dumesnil.
That evening when these faithful friends called, they were told that the mistress of the house was unwell and was lying down. She would not have them read the trace of suffering in her face; nor did she wish to sadden, by the tale of her sorrows, these two devoted hearts, resolved as she was to be silent and to drink to the dregs the cup of bitterness to which she had set her lips.
The next morning when Paul, refusing to take any denial, made his way almost by force into her bedroom, Lise took her child in her arms as if to make of it against her husband an impassable barrier, so that he should understand that the betrayed wife took refuge wholly in her maternal love. In vain he tried, piling lie upon lie, to excuse his fault; in vain he supplicated; he could not win a word from her. Her only reply was ironical smiles and the devouring of her daughter with kisses.
Humiliated at the check, for perhaps he had in his vanity imagined that at a word from him his wife would forget everything, the painter went away enraged. A few hours later he was with Sarah, who said:
"You are a poor sort of thing. Do you suppose I was afraid? If I ran away it was for your sake alone, because I did not want to be the cause of a scene which would have fetched out all the neighbors. But, you know, we can't have any more of that sort of thing. You must be good enough to make your choice between your wife and me. If you don't there is an end of my posing for you. I don't want to have a bullet through my head one of these fine days. Don't expect me any more at the Boulevard Clichy."
As, in spite of all the efforts of her lover to make her change her mind, the young girl was firm, Paul Meyrin was forced to go back to his studio in the Rue d'Assas; but only to pass an occasional hour there. He could not settle down to work tempted as he was at one moment to go and implore his wife's pardon, at another to rush off to Sarah Lamber and tell her he was ready to live with her.