"Yes, I should like that better; I shall die of fear here."
"Very well, meet me in five minutes at the gate which opens on the boulevard. I will fetch a cab."
When they were seated in the cab, she asked: "Where did you tell the coachman to drive to?"
Georges replied: "Do not worry; he knows."
He had given the man his address on the Rue de Constantinople.
Mme. Walter said to Du Roy: "You cannot imagine how I suffer on your account--how I am tormented, tortured. Yesterday I was harsh, but I wanted to escape you at any price. I was afraid to remain alone with you. Have you forgiven me?"
He pressed her hand. "Yes, yes, why should I not forgive you, loving you as I do?"
She looked at him with a beseeching air: "Listen: You must promise to respect me, otherwise I could never see you again."
At first he did not reply; a smile lurked beneath his mustache; then he murmured: "I am your slave."
She told him how she had discovered that she loved him, on learning that he was to marry Madeleine Forestier. Suddenly she ceased speaking. The carriage stopped. Du Roy opened the door.
"Where are we?" she asked.
He replied: "Alight and enter the house. We shall be undisturbed there."
"Where are we?" she repeated.
"At my rooms; they are my bachelor apartments which I have rented for a few days that we might have a corner in which to meet."
She clung to the cab, startled at the thought of a tete-a-tete, and stammered: "No, no, I do not want to."
He said firmly: "I swear to respect you. Come, you see that people are looking at us, that a crowd is gathering around us. Make haste!" And he repeated, "I swear to respect you."
She was terror-stricken and rushed into the house. She was about to ascend the stairs. He seized her arm: "It is here, on the ground floor."
When he had closed the door, he showered kisses upon her neck, her eyes, her lips; in spite of herself, she submitted to his caresses and even returned them, hiding her face and murmuring in broken accents: "I swear that I have never had a lover"; while he thought: "That is a matter of indifference to me."
CHAPTER XIII.
MADAME DE MARELLE
Autumn had come. The Du Roys had spent the entire summer in Paris, leading a vigorous campaign in "La Vie Francaise," in favor of the new cabinet. Although it was only the early part of October, the chamber was about to resume its sessions, for affairs in Morocco were becoming menacing. The celebrated speech made by Count de Lambert Sarrazin had furnished Du Roy with material for ten articles on the Algerian colony. "La Vie Francaise" had gained considerable prestige by its connection with the power; it was the first to give political news, and every newspaper in Paris and the provinces sought information from it. It was quoted, feared, and began to be respected: it was no longer the organ of a group of political intriguers, but the avowed mouthpiece of the cabinet. Laroche- Mathieu was the soul of the journal and Du Roy his speaking-trumpet. M. Walter retired discreetly into the background. Madeleine's salon became an influential center in which several members of the cabinet met every week. The president of the council had even dined there twice; the minister of foreign affairs was quite at home at the Du Roys; he came at any hour, bringing dispatches or information, which he dictated either to the husband or wife as if they were his secretaries. After the minister had departed, when Du Roy was alone with Madeleine, he uttered threats and insinuations against the "parvenu," as he called him. His wife simply shrugged her shoulders scornfully, repeating: "Become a minister and you can do the same; until then, be silent."
His reply was: "No one knows of what I am capable; perhaps they will find out some day."
She answered philosophically: "He who lives will see."
The morning of the reopening of the Chamber, Du Roy lunched with Laroche-Mathieu in order to receive instructions from him, before the session, for a political article the following day in "La Vie Francaise," which was to be a sort of official declaration of the plans of the cabinet. After listening to Laroche-Mathieu's eloquence for some time with jealousy in his heart, Du Roy sauntered slowly toward the office to commence his work, for he had nothing to do until four o'clock, at which hour he was to meet Mme. de Marelle at Rue de Constantinople. They met there regularly twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays.
On entering the office, he was handed a sealed dispatch; it was from Mme. Walter, and read thus:
"It is absolutely necessary that I should see you to-day. It is important. Expect me at two o'clock at Rue de Constantinople. I can render you a great service; your friend until death,"
"VIRGINIE."
He exclaimed: "Heavens! what a bore!" and left the office at once, too much annoyed to work.
For six weeks he had ineffectually tried to break with Mme. Walter. At three successive meetings she had been a prey to remorse, and had overwhelmed her lover with reproaches. Angered by those scenes and already weary of the dramatic woman, he had simply avoided her, hoping that the affair would end in that way.
But she persecuted him with her affection, summoned him at all times by telegrams to meet her at street corners, in shops, or public gardens. She was very different from what he had fancied she would be, trying to attract him by actions ridiculous in one of her age. It disgusted him to hear her call him: "My rat--my dog--my treasure- -my jewel--my blue-bird"--and to see her assume a kind of childish modesty when he approached. It seemed to him that being the mother of a family, a woman of the world, she should have been more sedate, and have yielded With tears if she chose, but with the tears of a Dido and not of a Juliette. He never heard her call him "Little one" or "Baby," without wishing to reply "Old woman," to take his hat with an oath and leave the room.
At first they had often met at Rue de Constantinople, but Du Roy, who feared an encounter with Mme. de Marelle, invented a thousand and one pretexts in order to avoid that rendezvous. He was therefore obliged to either lunch or dine at her house daily, when she would clasp his hand under cover of the table or offer him her lips behind the doors. Above all, Georges enjoyed being thrown so much in contact with Suzanne; she made sport of everything and everybody with cutting appropriateness. At length, however, he began to feel an unconquerable repugnance to the love lavished upon him by the mother; he could no longer see her, hear her, nor think of her without anger. He ceased calling upon her, replying to her letters, and yielding to her appeals. She finally divined that he no longer loved her, and the discovery caused her unutterable anguish; but she watched him, followed him in a cab with drawn blinds to the office, to his house, in the hope of seeing him pass by. He would have liked to strangle her, but he controlled himself on account of his position on "La Vie Francaise" and he endeavored by means of coldness, and even at times harsh words, to make her comprehend that all was at an end between them.
Then, too, she persisted in devising ruses for summoning him to Rue de Constantinople, and he was in constant fear that the two women would some day meet face to face at the door.
On the other hand, his affection for Mme. de Marelle had increased during the summer. They were both Bohemians by nature; they took excursions together to Argenteuil, Bougival, Maisons, and Poissy, and
