“What is the matter?” he asked, stupefied.  “Be calm; compose yourself.  You know well enough that I love you.  Come!”

“Enough!” she cried with a terrible look.

And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.

Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him.

When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair.  They threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.

Chapter Twelve

They began to love one another again.  Often, even in the middle of the day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette.  Rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband was odious, her life frightful.

“But what can I do?” he cried one day impatiently.

“Ah! if you would—­”

She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost.

“Why, what?” said Rodolphe.

She sighed.

“We would go and live elsewhere—­somewhere!”

“You are really mad!” he said laughing.  “How could that be possible?”

She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation.

What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love.  She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection.

Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband.  The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed the other.  Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe.  Then, while playing the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires.  It was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs.  She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces.  When he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince.  The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her company, watched her at work.