what did she care for the valet’s steady gaze? At the door the cotillon detained her a third time.
“Wait,” she muttered. “These idiots will never finish.”
And she took his hand, lest he should try to get away.
M. de Saffré was placing the Duc de Rozan with his back to the wall, in a corner of the room beside the door of the dining-room. He put a lady in front of him, then a gentleman back to back with the lady, then another lady facing the gentleman, and so on in a line, couple by couple, like a long snake. As the ladies lingered and talked:
“Come along, mesdames!” he cried. “Take your places for the ‘Columns.’“
They came, “the columns” were formed. The indecency of finding themselves thus caught, squeezed in between two men, leaning against the back of one, and feeling the chest of the other in front, made these ladies very gay. The tips of the breasts touched the facings of the dress-coats, the legs of the gentlemen disappeared in the ladies’ skirts, and when any sudden outburst of merriment made a head lean forward, the moustachios in front were obliged to draw back so as not to carry matters so far as kissing. At one moment a wag must have given a slight push, for the line closed up, the men plunged deeper into the skirts; there were little cries, laughs, endless laughs. The Baronne de Meinhold was heard to say: “But, monsieur, you are smothering me; don’t squeeze me so hard!” and this seemed so amusing, and occasioned so mad a fit of hilarity in the whole row that “the columns” tottered, staggered, clashed together, leant one against the other to avoid falling. M. de Saffré waited with raised hands, ready to clap. Then he clapped. At this signal, suddenly, all turned round. The couples who found themselves face to face clasped waists, and the row dispersed its chaplet of dancers into the room. None remained but the poor Duc de Rozan, who, on turning round, found himself stuck with his nose against the wall. He was ridiculed.
“Come,” said Renée to Maxime.
The band still played the waltz. This soft music, whose monotonous rhythm tended to become insipid, redoubled Renée’s exasperation. She gained the small drawingroom, holding Maxime by the hand; and pushing him up the staircase that led to the dressing-room:
“Go up,” she ordered.
She followed him. At this moment Madame Sidonie, who had been prowling after her sister-in-law the whole evening, astonished at her continual wanderings through the rooms, just reached the conservatory steps. She saw a man’s legs plunging into the darkness of the little staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and catching up her sorceress’s dress so as to go quicker, she hunted for her brother, upsetting a figure of the cotillon, questioning the servants she met on her way. She at last found Saccard with M. de Mareuil in a room adjacent to the dining-room, that had been fitted up as a temporary smoking-room. The two fathers were discussing the settlements, the contract. But when his sister came up and whispered a word in his ear, Saccard rose, apologized, disappeared.
Upstairs, the dressing-room was in complete disorder. On the chairs trailed Echo’s costume, the torn tights, odds and ends of crumpled lace, underclothing thrown aside in a heap, all that a woman in the hurry of being waited for leaves behind her. The little ivory and silver utensils lay here, there, and everywhere; there were brushes and nail-files that had fallen on to the carpet; and the towels, still damp, the cakes of soap forgotten on the marble slab, the scent bottles left unstoppered lent a strong, pungent odour to the flesh-coloured tent. Renée, to remove the white from her arms and shoulders, had dipped herself in the pink marble bath, after the tableaux-vivants. Iridescent soap-stains floated on the surface of the water now grown cold.
Maxime stepped on a corset, almost stumbled, tried to laugh. But he shuddered before Renée’s stern face. She came up to him, pushed him, said in a low voice:
“So you are going to marry the hunchback?”
“Not a bit of it,” he murmured. “Who told you so?”
“Oh, don’t tell any lies, it’s no use….”
He had a moment of resistance. She alarmed him, he wanted to have done with her.
“Well then, yes, I am going to marry her. And what then?… Am I not my own master?”
She came up to him, with her head a little lowered, and with a wicked laugh, and seizing his wrists:
“The master! you the master!… You know better than that. It is I who am your master. I could break your arms if I were spiteful; you are no stronger than a girl.”
And as he struggled, she twisted his arms with all the nervous violence of her anger. He uttered a faint cry. Then she let go, resuming:
“See? we’d better not fight; I should only beat you.”
He remained pallid, with the shame of the pain he felt at his wrists. He watched her coming and going in the dressing-room. She pushed back the furniture, reflecting, fixing on the plan that had been revolving in her head since her husband had told her of the marriage.
“I shall lock you up here,” she said at last; “and as soon as it’s daylight we’ll start for Havre.”
He grew still paler with alarm and stupor.
“But this is madness!” he cried. “We can’t run away together. You are going off your head.”
“Very likely. In any case it is you and your father who have driven me so…. I want you, and I mean to have you. So much the worse for the fools!”
A red light gleamed from her eyes. She continued, approaching Maxime once more, scorching his face with her breath:
“What do you think would become of me if you married the hunchback? You would laugh at me between you, I should perhaps be obliged to take back that great noodle of a Mussy, who would leave my very feet indifferent…. When people have done what you and I have done, they stick to one another. Besides, it’s quite plain. I am bored when you’re not there, and as I’m going away, I shall take you with me…. You can tell Céleste what you want her to fetch from your place.”
The unfortunate Maxime held out his hands, beseeching her:
“Look here, Renée dear, don’t be silly. Be yourself…. Just think of the scandal.”
“What do I care for the scandal! If you refuse, I shall go down to the drawingroom and cry out that I have slept with you, and that you’re base enough now to want to marry the hunchback.”
He bent his head, listened to her, already yielding, accepting this will that thrust itself so rudely upon him.
“We will go to Havre,” she resumed in a lower voice, caressing her dream, “and from there we shall cross to England. Nobody shall ever interfere with us again. If that is not far enough away, we shall go to America. I who am always so cold shall be better there. I have often envied the Creoles….”
But in the measure that she enlarged upon her proposal, Maxime’s terror was renewed. To leave Paris, to go so far away with a woman who was undoubtedly mad, to leave behind him a tale whose scandalous side would exile him for ever! it was as though he were being stifled by a hideous nightmare. He sought desperately for a means of escape from this dressing-room, from this rose-coloured retreat where tolled the passing-bell of Charenton. He thought he had hit upon something.
“You see, I have no money,” he said, gently, so
