Chapter 18

ATTAINMENT

It was dark in the apartments in the Rue de Constantinople, when
Georges du Roy and Clotilde de Marelle, having met at the door,
entered them. Without giving him time to raise the shades, the
latter said:

"So you are going to marry Suzanne Walter?"

He replied in the affirmative, adding gently: "Did you not know it?"

She answered angrily: "So you are going to marry Suzanne Walter? For
three months you have deceived me. Everyone knew of it but me. My
husband told me. Since you left your wife you have been preparing
for that stroke, and you made use of me in the interim. What a
rascal you are!"

He asked: "How do you make that out? I had a wife who deceived me; I
surprised her, obtained a divorce, and am now going to marry
another. What is more simple than that?"

She murmured: "What a villain!"

He said with dignity: "I beg of you to be more careful as to what
you say."

She rebelled at such words from him: "What! Would you like me to
handle you with gloves? You have conducted yourself like a rascal
ever since I have known you, and now you do not want me to speak of
it. You deceive everyone; you gather pleasure and money everywhere,
and you want me to treat you as an honest man."

He rose; his lips twitched: "Be silent or I will make you leave
these rooms."

She cried: "Leave here--you will make me--you? You forget that it is
I who have paid for these apartments from the very first, and you
threaten to put me out of them. Be silent, good-for-nothing! Do you
think I do not know how you stole a portion of Vaudrec's bequest
from Madeleine? Do you think I do not know about Suzanne?"

He seized her by her shoulders and shook her. "Do not speak of that;
I forbid you."

"I know you have ruined her!"

He would have taken anything else, but that lie exasperated him. He
repeated: "Be silent--take care"--and he shook her as he would have
shaken the bough of a tree. Still she continued; "You were her ruin,
I know it." He rushed upon her and struck her as if she had been a
man. Suddenly she ceased speaking, and groaned beneath his blows.
Finally he desisted, paced the room several times in order to regain
his self-possession, entered the bedroom, filled the basin with cold
water and bathed his head. Then he washed his hands and returned to
see what Clotilde was doing. She had not moved. She lay upon the
floor weeping softly. He asked harshly:

"Will you soon have done crying?"

She did not reply. He stood in the center of the room, somewhat
embarrassed, somewhat ashamed, as he saw the