Yet through the shifting mists of those dream-days of doubt and fear—when rustling leaves tracked him homewards, and his own shadow slipped away to denounce him—one fact remained real and potent. He knew that all appeal to madame’s feminine compassion would be vain. If she possessed his secret, she would certainly betray him.
Again he looked at her, marking, with strong dislike, the rust-red grain of her skin over her cheek-bones, the tight tartan-silk blouse, the stiff linen collar that made her neck appear so dirty by contrast. The room, with its hideous-patterned paper seemed to wall him in alive; the charcoal fumes from the stove to suffocate him.
Then, suddenly, he smiled. All this, too, would pass away. Next week, he would rub his eyes and wonder if—somewhere—on some alien planet, there really existed a strange, hostile room, tenanted by an unhuman, sawdust-stuffed woman. Both would dwindle down to a name on an envelope—merely an address.
In the reaction of spirits, he stooped to pick up madame’s ball of worsted.
‘The last time I shall do this for you, madame!’
Even as he spoke, his morbid mind quarrelled with his sentence; it seemed as though its finality left a loophole for sinister interpretation.
‘Bien!’
‘Shall you miss me, madame?’
‘Yes.’ Her ‘si’ was emphatic. ‘As one misses all men. Less work, but, unfortunately, less money.’
The speech, typical of the frugal housekeeper of grasping spirit, was reassuring. He smiled once more as he looked at the clock.