Part 71 (1/2)
”How could you forget a thing of such importance? For, if it suits you, we must rent it at once.”
”Oh! my dear friend, I am not anxious to stand here in the street any longer. What do we look like--talking like this on a doorstep?”
”Then let me come up a moment.”
”No; I tell you that I am going to bed!”
”There's something wrong, f.a.n.n.y. This isn't natural. You're not the same with me that you were two days ago.”
”You can tell me all that to-morrow. Good-night!”
”Very well, until to-morrow, then, madame! I trust that you will be visible?”
”Mon Dieu! monsieur, I am always visible when I am not sick. But don't come too early; for I don't rise with the dawn.”
f.a.n.n.y knocked, and the door opened. She hurried in and closed the door on Gustave, who remained in the street, poor fellow, unable to make up his mind to leave his fair one's abode. He did not know what to believe.
He asked himself if he had not done wrong to reproach f.a.n.n.y; she had been to see one of her friends, and had returned alone: there was no great harm in that. And yet, he was ill at ease, he suffered; his heart told him that something was wrong, and that his love was not the same to him as before.
At last, after pacing back and forth in front of f.a.n.n.y's door for nearly an hour, gazing at those of her windows which were lighted, he decided to go away when the lights went out.
”I wish to-morrow were here,” he thought.
Gustave did not close his eyes that night; where is the lover who could sleep, in his position? Only a lover who is not in love. At eight o'clock, the young man went down to the office, where there were as yet no clerks; but he found his uncle, who was always at his desk early.
”The deuce!” said Monsieur Grandcourt; ”you're on hand in good season!
Was it love of work that woke you?”
”Yes, uncle; I have some accounts to look over.”
”How pale you look, and exhausted! One would say that you had been up all night.”
”I am just out of bed.”
”I'll wager that you didn't sleep. Is there anything new in your love affair?”
”Why--no, uncle.”
”Your dear f.a.n.n.y hasn't played you some new trick?”
”Ah! uncle, at the point we have reached----”
”It wouldn't surprise me at all.”
”You have a very bad opinion of her.”
”When a woman has made a fool of a man once, she will make a fool of him again--she will always do it! However, it would be better before marriage than after. Come and breakfast with me.”
”It's too early, uncle; I am not hungry. By the way, have you thought about Arthur?”