He was close to the front door when she appeared in his path, materialized from thin air.
"Wait outside. I'll go with you."
She stood tearing her handkerchief to pieces, looking at him strangely out of her swollen eyes, her cheeks flushed. She went on:
"Why, we must talk. We can surely find the way out. But not here. At the rooms." A film passed over her eyes. She caught him fast round the neck, raised her lips toward his, and whispered, with a distracted appearance that seemed guilty as well as passionate, "You still love me? As much as ever?"
He felt that he and she had reached the depths. This temptation capping the climax of her rejection—this monstrous inversion of the classic triangle! "What is she, then?" he asked himself, "and what am I?" For he caught hold of her as if he were going to crush her doubly perfidious, inexplicable heart, and fastened his lips to hers in a kiss that burned her up, before he thrust her from him with a gesture meant to express all his loathing of her, of himself, of the whole of life.
"Oh, wait!" she cried, as he fumbled with the door.
To hold her off with the first words that came into his head, he cast at her:
"To-morrow!"
She remained facing the closed door, softly repeating:
"To-morrow."