“That what?  Tell me.”

He shook his head, hesitating, not to tell her a lie, but to insult and humiliate her.

“Well,” he went on, “since you force me to do it, I will confess, at whatever cost, that I have had a mistress for several years—­I add that our relations are now purely amical—­”

“Very well,” she interrupted, “your family reasons are sufficient.”

“And then,” he pursued, in a lower tone, “if you wish to know all, well—­I have a child by her.”

“A child!  Oh, you poor dear.”  She rose.  “Then there is nothing for me to do but withdraw.”

But he seized her hands, and, at the same time satisfied with the success of his deception and ashamed of his brutality, he begged her to stay awhile.  She refused.  Then he drew her to him, kissed her hair, and cajoled her.  Her troubled eyes looked deep into his.

“Ah, then!” she said.  “No, let me undress.”

“Not for the world!”

“Yes!”

“Oh, the scene of the other night beginning all over again,” he murmured, sinking, overwhelmed, into a chair.  He felt borne down, burdened by an unspeakable weariness.

He undressed beside the fire and warmed himself while waiting for her to get to bed.  When they were in bed she enveloped him with her supple, cold limbs.

“Now is it true that I am to come here no more?”

He did not answer, but understood that she had no intention of going away and that he had to do with a person of the staying kind.

“Tell me.”

He buried his head in her breast to keep from having to answer.

“Tell me in my lips.”

He beset her furiously, to make her keep silent, then he lay disabused, weary, happy that it was over.  When they lay down again she put her arm about his neck and ran her tongue around in his mouth like an auger, but he paid little heed to caresses and remained feeble and pathetic.  Then she bent over, reached him, and he groaned.

“Ah!” she exclaimed suddenly, rising, “at last I have heard you cry!”

He lay, broken in body and spirit, incapable of thinking two thoughts in sequence.  His brain seemed to whir, undone, in his skull.

He collected himself, however, rose and went into the other room to dress and let her do the same.

Through the drawn portiere separating the two rooms he saw a little pinhole of light which came from the wax candle placed on the mantel opposite the curtain.  Hyacinthe, going back and forth, would momentarily intercept this light, then it would flash out again.

“Ah,” she said, “my poor darling, you have a child.”

“The shot struck home,” said he to himself, and aloud, “Yes, a little girl.”

“How old?”

“She will soon be six,” and he described her as flaxen-haired, lively, but in very frail health, requiring multiple precautions and constant care.

“You must have very sad evenings,” said Mme. Chantelouve, in a voice of emotion, from behind the curtain.