Nobody was there except my husband.
But I was just in time to catch the sound of rustling skirts in the adjoining apartment and to see a door closed gently behind them.
I looked around. Although the sun was shining, the blinds were down and the air was full of a rank odour of stale tobacco such as might have been brought back in people's clothes from that shameless woman's salon.
My husband, who had clearly been drinking, was looking at me with a half-senseless grin. His thin hair was a little disordered. His prominent front teeth showed hideously. I saw that he was trying to carry things off with an air.
"This is an unexpected pleasure. I think it must be the first time . . . the very first time that. . . ."
I felt deadly cold; I almost swooned; I could scarcely breathe, but I said:
"Is that all you've got to say to me?"
"All? What else, my dear? I don't understand. . . ."
"You understand quite well," I answered, and then looking towards the door of the adjoining apartment, I said, "both of you understand."
My husband began to laugh—a drunken, idiotic laugh.