e that--and that--and that--there you are, you trollop!"

Then, when he was out of breath, exhausted from beating her, he got
up, and went over to the chest of drawers to get himself a glass of
sugared orange-water for he was almost ready to faint after his
exertion.

And she lay huddled up in bed, crying and heaving great sobs, feeling
that there was an end of her happiness, and that it was all her own
fault.

Then, in the midst of her tears, she faltered:

"Listen, Antoine, come here! I told you a lie--listen! I'll explain it
to you."

And now, prepared to defend herself, armed with excuses and
subterfuges, she slightly raised her head all tangled under her
crumpled nightcap.

And he, turning towards her, drew close to her, ashamed at having
whacked her, but feeling intensely still in his heart's core as a
husband an inexhaustible hatred against that woman who had deceived
his predecessor, Souris.

ALL OVER

The Comte de Lormerin had just finished dressing himself. He cast a
parting glance at the large glass, which occupied an entire panel of
his dressing-room, and smiled.

He was really a fine-looking man still, though he was quite gray.
Tall, slight, elegant, with no projecting paunch, with a scanty
moustache of doubtful shade in his thin face, which seemed fair rather
than white, he had presence, that "chic" in short, that indescribable
something which establishes between two men more difference than
millions.

He murmured, "Lormerin is still alive!"

And he made his way into the drawing-room where his correspondence
awaited him.

On his table, where everything had its place, the work-table of the
gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside
three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the
finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the
choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each
morning before tearing open the envelopes.

It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious papers bring him? What did
they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing in each case the hand that
wrote them, selecting them, making two or three lots, according to
what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he
was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him