“For God’s sake let’s have a drink!” he said. “There’s something about my wife that’s given my blood a turn.”
“Beat her!” said Bouvier, pushing forward his glass. “If you don’t beat them be sure they’ll betray you.”
His wife’s treachery had set him against all women. Lemaire growled something inarticulate. He was thinking of the days in Algiers, of their strange and often disgraceful existence there. Bouvier knew nothing of that.
“Come on!” he said.
And he lifted his glass of absinthe to his lips.
At supper that night Lemaire perpetually watched his wife. She seemed to be just as usual. For years there had been a sort of sickly weariness upon her face. It was there now. For years there had been a dull sound in her voice. He heard it to-night. For years she had had a poor appetite. She ate little at supper, had her habitual manner of swallowing almost with difficulty. Surely she was just as usual.
And yet she was not—she was not!
After supper the two men returned to the arbour to smoke and drink, and Madame Lemaire remained in the kitchen to clear away and wash up.
“Isn’t there something the matter with my wife?” asked Lemaire, lighting a thin, black cigar, and settling his loose, bulky body in the small chair, with his fat legs stretched out, and one foot crossed over the other. “Or is it that I’m out of sorts to-night? It seems to me as if she were strange.”
Bouvier was a small, pinched man, with a narrow face, evenly red in colour, large ears that stood out from his closely shaven head, and hot-looking, prominent brown eyes.