He emptied his glass. Bouvier suddenly looked terrible—looked like the man who had put three bullets into his sleeping guest.
“How did I know?” he said.
He leaned across the table towards Lemaire.
“How did I know?” he repeated in a low voice.
“What—when your wife——”
“Yes. They didn’t let me see anything. They were too sharp. No; it was one night I saw him, with his mouth at her ear, coming in behind her through the door like a shadow. There!”
He sat back with his hands on his knees. Lemaire stared at him again.
Again the wind rustled furtively through the diseased vine-leaves of the arbour.
“It was then that I got out my revolver and charged it,” continued Bouvier, in a less mysterious voice, as of one returned to practical life. “For I knew she’d been up to some villainy. Pass the bottle!”...
“Pass the bottle!... Why don’t you pass the bottle?”