“Stop! wait!” cried the pretty Parisian, bolting the door of the disordered room.

She rang for Therese, called for her daughter, the cook, and the man-servant, wishing she possessed the whistle of the machinist at the Opera.  Her call, however, answered the same purpose.  In a moment, another phenomenon! the salon assumed a piquant morning look, quite in keeping with the becoming toilet hastily got together by the fugitive; we say it to her glory, for she was evidently a clever woman, in this at least.

“You!” she said, coming forward, “at this hour?  What has happened?”

“Very serious things,” answered des Lupeaulx.  “You and I must understand each other now.”

Celestine looked at the man behind his glasses, and understood the matter.

“My principle vice,” she said, “is oddity.  For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—­business, if you will,—­the rest can come later.  However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist.  We women have politics of our own.”

Already the tones of her voice and the charm of her manners were producing their effect on the secretary and metamorphosing his roughness into sentimental courtesy; she had recalled him to his obligations as a lover.  A clever pretty woman makes an atmosphere about her in which the nerves relax and the feelings soften.

“You are ignorant of what is happening,” said des Lupeaulx, harshly, for he still thought it best to make a show of harshness.  “Read that.”

He gave the two newspapers to the graceful woman, having drawn a line in red ink round each of the famous articles.

“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, “but this is dreadful!  Who is this Baudoyer?”

“A donkey,” answered des Lupeaulx; “but, as you see, he uses means, —­he gives monstrances; he succeeds, thanks to some clever hand that pulls the wires.”

The thought of her debts crossed Madame Rabourdin’s mind and blurred her sight, as if two lightning flashes had blinded her eyes at the same moment; her ears hummed under the pressure of the blood that began to beat in her arteries; she remained for a moment quite bewildered, gazing at a window which she did not see.

“But are you faithful to us?” she said at last, with a winning glance at des Lupeaulx, as if to attach him to her.

“That is as it may be,” he replied, answering her glance with an interrogative look which made the poor woman blush.

“If you demand caution-money you may lose all,” she said, laughing; “I thought you more magnanimous than you are.  And you, you thought me less a person than I am,—­a sort of school-girl.”

“You have misunderstood me,” he said, with a covert smile; “I meant that I could not assist a man who plays against me just as l’Etourdi played against Mascarille.”