Chapter 13 - Page 2

"VIRGINIE."

He exclaimed: "Heavens! what a bore!" and left the office at once,
too much annoyed to work.

For six weeks he had ineffectually tried to break with Mme. Walter.
At three successive meetings she had been a prey to remorse, and had
overwhelmed her lover with reproaches. Angered by those scenes and
already weary of the dramatic woman, he had simply avoided her,
hoping that the affair would end in that way.

But she persecuted him with her affection, summoned him at all times
by telegrams to meet her at street corners, in shops, or public
gardens. She was very different from what he had fancied she would
be, trying to attract him by actions ridiculous in one of her age.
It disgusted him to hear her call him: "My rat--my dog--my treasure-
-my jewel--my blue-bird"--and to see her assume a kind of childish
modesty when he approached. It seemed to him that being the mother
of a family, a woman of the world, she should have been more sedate,
and have yielded With tears if she chose, but with the tears of a
Dido and not of a Juliette. He never heard her call him "Little one"
or "Baby," without wishing to reply "Old woman," to take his hat
with an oath and leave the room.

At first they had often met at Rue de Constantinople, but Du Roy,
who feared an encounter with Mme. de Marelle, invented a thousand
and one pretexts in order to avoid that rendezvous. He was therefore
obliged to either lunch or dine at her house daily, when she would
clasp his hand under cover of the table or offer him her lips behind
the doors. Above all, Georges enjoyed being thrown so much in
contact with Suzanne; she made sport of everything and everybody
with cutting appropriateness. At length, however, he began to feel
an unconquerable repugnance to the love lavished upon him by the
mother; he could no longer see her, hear her, nor think of her
without anger. He ceased calling upon her, replying to her letters,
and yielding to her appeals. She finally divined that he no longer
loved her, and the discovery caused her unutterable anguish; but she
watched him, followed him in a cab with drawn blinds to the office,
to his house, in the hope of seeing him pass by. He would have liked
to strangle her, but he controlled himself on account of his
position on "La Vie Francaise" and he endeavored by means of
coldness, and even at times harsh words, to make her comprehend that
all was at an end between them.

Then, too, she persisted in devising ruses for summoning him to Rue
de Constantinople, and he was in constant fear that the two women
would some day meet face to face at the door.

On the other hand, his affection for Mme. de Marelle had increased