And Parent cried out in bewilderment:  “You lie—­you lie—­worthless woman!”

But she continued:  “You fool!  Everybody knows it except you.  I tell you, this is his father.  You need only look at him to see it.”

Parent staggered backward, and then he suddenly turned round, took a candle, and rushed into the next room; returning almost immediately, carrying little George wrapped up in his bedclothes.  The child, who had been suddenly awakened, was crying from fright.  Parent threw him into his wife’s arms, and then, without speaking, he pushed her roughly out toward the stairs, where Limousin was waiting, from motives of prudence.

Then he shut the door again, double-locked and bolted it, but had scarcely got back into the drawing-room when he fell to the floor at full length.

Parent lived alone, quite alone.  During the five weeks that followed their separation, the feeling of surprise at his new life prevented him from thinking much.  He had resumed his bachelor life, his habits of lounging, about, and took his meals at a restaurant, as he had done formerly.  As he wished to avoid any scandal, he made his wife an allowance, which was arranged by their lawyers.  By degrees, however, the thought of the child began to haunt him.  Often, when he was at home alone at night, he suddenly thought he heard George calling out “Papa,” and his heart would begin to beat, and he would get up quickly and open the door, to see whether, by chance, the child might have returned, as dogs or pigeons do.  Why should a child have less instinct than an animal?  On finding that he was mistaken, he would sit down in his armchair again and think of the boy.  He would think of him for hours and whole days.  It was not only a moral, but still more a physical obsession, a nervous longing to kiss him, to hold and fondle him, to take him on his knees and dance him.  He felt the child’s little arms around his neck, his little mouth pressing a kiss on his beard, his soft hair tickling his cheeks, and the remembrance of all those childish ways made him suffer as a man might for some beloved woman who has left him.  Twenty or a hundred times a day he asked himself the question whether he was or was not George’s father, and almost before he was in bed every night he recommenced the same series of despairing questionings.

He especially dreaded the darkness of the evening, the melancholy feeling of the twilight.  Then a flood of sorrow invaded his heart, a torrent of despair which seemed to overwhelm him and drive him mad.  He was as afraid of his own thoughts as men are of criminals, and he fled before them as one does from wild beasts.  Above all things, he feared his empty, dark, horrible dwelling and the deserted streets, in which, here and there, a gas lamp flickered, where the isolated foot passenger whom one hears in the distance seems to be a night prowler, and makes one walk faster or slower, according to whether he is coming toward you or following you.