Part 51 (1/2)

Then mechanically regarding the crowd that flowed through these _docks_, that contained everything that could please or disgust a whole world at once, the crowd, the clerks, the carpets, the linen, the crowding, the heaping,--all seemed strange and comic to her, novel and not Parisian, but American and up-to-date.

”Oh! decidedly up-to-date!--And so convenient!” she said, as she heard the young girls laugh when they finished their love-letters.

Then she began to write, having surely found the expressions she sought.

She sent Rosas a letter of apology: she would be at his house to-morrow at the same hour. To-day, her uncle took up her day, compelling her to go to see his paintings, to visit the Louvre, to buy draperies for an Oriental scene that he intended to paint. If Rosas did not receive the letter in time, it mattered little! To Lissac,--and this was the main consideration,--she intimated that she would call on him the next morning at ten o'clock.

”Rendezvous box!” she said, as she slipped her two letters into the letter-box. ”This extreme comfort is very ironical.”

She smiled as she thought how long it would take to count the number of the little hands, some trembling, some bold, that had slipped into the rectilinear mouth of the letter-box some little missive that was either the foretaste or the postscript of adultery.

Then she went downstairs and rejoined Vaudrey, who was impatiently tapping the floor of the carriage with his foot.

”I was a long time there, I ask your pardon,” said Marianne.

”At any rate, I hope you have bought something that suited you?” asked Vaudrey, who seemed to have caught a cold.

”Nothing at all. There is nothing in that store!”

Vaudrey was alarmed. Were they to visit one after the other all the fancy goods stores?

Marianne took pity on him.

”Let us return, shall we?” she asked.

She called to the coachman: ”Rue p.r.o.ny!” while Sulpice, whom she unwillingly took with her, though he wearily yawned, seized her hand and said as he sneezed:

”Ah! how kind you are!”

The next day, Marianne rang the bell of Lissac's house in Rue d'Aumale, a little before the appointed hour.

”Punctual as a creditor!” she thought.

She reached Guy's, ready for anything. She was very pale and charming in her light costume, and she entered as one would go into a fray with head high. She would not leave the place until she had recovered her letters.

It was only for those sc.r.a.ps of paper that she again, as it were, bound and tied herself to her past; she wished to cut herself away from it and to tear them to pieces with her teeth. But what if Guy should refuse to give them up to her? That could not be possible, although he was sincerely attached to Rosas. Still, between grat.i.tude to a woman and duty to a friend, a man might hesitate, when he is a corrupted Parisian like Lissac.

”His affection for Jose will not carry him to the length of forgetting all that I have given him of myself!” Marianne thought.

Then shrugging her shoulders:

”After all, these men have such a freemasonry between them, as _he_ said!--And they speak of our fraternity, we women!--It is nothing compared with theirs!”

Guy did not show any displeasure on hearing Mademoiselle Kayser announced. He was waiting for her. As Marianne could not feel free so long as he held the proof of her imprudence, some day or other she must inevitably seek him to supplicate or threaten him. The letter received overnight had apprised him that that moment had arrived.

He had just finished dressing when she entered. His suede gloves were laid out flat on a little table beside his hat, his stick and a small antique cloisonne vase into which were thrown the many-colored rosettes of his foreign decorations, some of them red, amid which a little gold cross glistened like some brilliant beetle settled on a deep-hued rose.

”I wager that you are going out!” Marianne remarked abruptly. ”Clearly, you did not expect me!--Haven't you received my letter?”

”My dear Marianne,” he replied, as he slowly finished adjusting the knot of his cravat, ”that is the very remark you made when you condescended to reappear at my house after a lapse of some years. You have too modest a way of announcing yourself; I a.s.sure you that, for my part, I always expect you--and that with impatience. But to-day, more than on any other occasion, because of your charming note.”