He abandoned his pose.  The thing was worth the trouble, que diable! M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge.  Jenkins had come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the Tuileries and to appoint a day.  This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the cross for him.

“Quick, let us start, my dear doctor.  I follow you.”

He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.

While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in contempt, watched them with an air of saying, “Well, I am waiting.”

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a visit of the most extreme importance—­She smiled in pity.

“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it.  At the point which we have reached I can work without you.”

“Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “the work is almost completed.”

He added with the air of a connoisseur: 

“It is a fine piece of work.”

And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made for the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.

“Stay, you.  I have something to say to you.”

He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an explosion.

“You will excuse me, cher ami?  Mademoiselle has a word for me.  My brougham is at the door.  Get in.  I will be with you immediately.”

As soon as the door of the studio had closed on that heavy, retreating foot, each of them looked at the other full in the face.

“You must be either drunk or mad to have allowed yourself to behave in this way.  What! you dare to enter my house when I am not at home?  What does this violence mean?  By what right—­”

“By the right of a despairing and incurable passion.”

“Be silent, Jenkins, you are saying words that I will not hear.  I allow you to come here out of pity, from habit, because my father was fond of you.  But never speak to me again of your—­love”—­she uttered the word in a very low voice, as though it were shameful—­“or you shall never see me again, even though I should have to kill myself in order to escape you once and for all.”

A child caught in mischief could not bend its head more humbly than did Jenkins, as he replied: 

“It is true.  I was in the wrong.  A moment of madness, of blindness—­But why do you amuse yourself by torturing my heart as you do?”

“I think of you often, however.”

“Whether you think of me or not, I am there, I see what goes on, and your coquetry hurts me terribly.”

A touch of red mounted to her cheeks at this reproach.