She led him through the shop and up a stair at the back, throwing open a door on the first floor. Lacour entered a neat drawing-room, with windows opening out upon the street. Madame Caspilier seated herself at a table, resting her elbow upon it, shading her eyes with her hand, and yet Lacour felt them searching his very soul.
"Sit down," she said. "You are my husband's friend. What have you to say?"
Now, it is a difficult thing for a man to tell a beautiful woman that her husband—for the moment—prefers some one else, so Lacour began on generalities. He said a poet might be likened to a butterfly, or perhaps to the more industrious bee, who sipped honey from every flower, and so enriched the world. A poet was a law unto himself, and should not be judged harshly from what might be termed a shopkeeping point of view. Then Lacour, warming to his work, gave many instances where the wives of great men had condoned and even encouraged their husbands' little idiosyncrasies, to the great augmenting of our most valued literature.
Now and then, as this eloquent man talked, Valdorême's eyes seemed to flame dangerously in the shadow, but the woman neither moved nor interrupted him while he spoke. When he had finished, her voice sounded cold and unimpassioned, and he felt with relief that the outbreak he had feared was at least postponed.
"You would advise me then," she began, "to do as the wife of that great novelist did, and invite my husband and the woman he admires to my table?"
"Oh, I don't say I could ask you to go so far as that," said Lacour; "but——"
"I'm no halfway woman. It is all or nothing with me. If I invited my husband to dine with me, I would also invite this creature—What is her name? Tenise, you say. Well, I would invite her too. Does she know he is a married man?"
"Yes," cried Lacour eagerly; "but I assure you, madame, she has nothing but the kindliest feelings towards you. There is no jealousy about Tenise."
"How good of her! How very good of her!" said the Russian woman, with such bitterness that Lacour fancied uneasily that he had somehow made an injudicious remark, whereas all his efforts were concentrated in a desire to conciliate and please.
"Very well," said Valdorême, rising. "You may tell my husband that you have been successful in your mission. Tell him that I will provide for them both. Ask them to honour me with their presence at breakfast to- morrow morning at twelve o'clock. If he wants money, as you say, here are two hundred francs, which will perhaps be sufficient for his wants until midday to-morrow."