Parent had got up; he was unsteady on his legs, dazed and bewildered, and saying, “I shall see you again later on,” he went out, holding on to the wall, for the floor seemed to roll like a ship.  George had been carried out by his nurse, while Henriette and Limousin went into the drawing-room.

As soon as the door was shut, he said:  “You must be mad, surely, to torment your husband as you do?”

She immediately turned on him:  “Ah!  Do you know that I think the habit you have got into lately, of looking upon Parent as a martyr, is very unpleasant?”

Limousin threw himself into an easy-chair and crossed his legs.  “I am not setting him up as a martyr in the least, but I think that, situated as we are, it is ridiculous to defy this man as you do, from morning till night.”

She took a cigarette from the mantelpiece, lighted it, and replied:  “But I do not defy him; quite the contrary.  Only he irritates me by his stupidity, and I treat him as he deserves.”

Limousin continued impatiently:  “What you are doing is very foolish!  I am only asking you to treat your husband gently, because we both of us require him to trust us.  I think that you ought to see that.”

They were close together:  he, tall, dark, with long whiskers and the rather vulgar manners of a good-looking man who is very well satisfied with himself; she, small, fair, and pink, a little Parisian, born in the back room of a shop, half cocotte and half bourgeoise, brought up to entice customers to the store by her glances, and married, in consequence, to a simple, unsophisticated man, who saw her outside the door every morning when he went out and every evening when he came home.

“But do you not understand; you great booby,” she said, “that I hate him just because he married me, because he bought me, in fact; because everything that he says and does, everything that he thinks, acts on my nerves?  He exasperates me every moment by his stupidity, which you call his kindness; by his dullness, which you call his confidence, and then, above all, because he is my husband, instead of you.  I feel him between us, although he does not interfere with us much.  And then—–­and then!  No, it is, after all, too idiotic of him not to guess anything!  I wish he would, at any rate, be a little jealous.  There are moments when I feel inclined to say to him:  ’Do you not see, you stupid creature, that Paul is my lover?’

“It is quite incomprehensible that you cannot understand how hateful he is to me, how he irritates me.  You always seem to like him, and you shake hands with him cordially.  Men are very extraordinary at times.”

“One must know how to dissimulate, my dear.”

“It is no question of dissimulation, but of feeling.  One might think that, when you men deceive one another, you like each other better on that account, while we women hate a man from the moment that we have betrayed him.”