d, she said:

"You will not be vexed with me, will you, my own Robert, at what I am
going to say? Not to-day--to-morrow."

She had considered it necessary to make this sacrifice to the jealous
dead.

CHAPTER XII

On the following day, he took her to a furnished room, commonplace but
cheerful, which he had selected on the first floor of a house facing the
square, near the Bibliotheque Nationale. In the centre of the square
stood the basin of a fountain, supported by lusty nymphs. The paths,
bordered with laurel and spindlewood, were deserted, and from this
little-frequented spot one heard the vast and reassuring hum of the
city. The rehearsal had finished very late. When they entered the room
the night, already slower to arrive in this season of melting snow, was
beginning to cast its gloom over the hangings. The large mirrors of the
wardrobe and overmantel were filling with vague lights and shadows. She
took off her fur coat, went to look out of the window between the
curtains and said:

"Robert, the steps are wet."

He answered that there was no flight of steps, only the pavement and the
road, and then another pavement and the railings of the square.

"You are a Parisian, you know this square well. In the centre, among the
trees, there is a monumental fountain, with enormous women whose breasts
are not as pretty as yours."

In his impatience he helped her to undo her cloth frock; but he could
not find the hooks, and scratched himself with the pins.

"I am clumsy," he said.

She retorted laughingly:

"You are certainly not so clever as Madame Michon! It's not so much
clumsiness, but you are afraid of getting pricked. Men are a cowardly
race. As for women, they have to accustom themselves to suffer. It's
true: to be a woman is to be nearly always ailing."

He did not notice that she was pale, with dark rings round her eyes. He
desired her so ardently; he no longer saw her.

"They are very sensitive to pain," he said, "but they are also very
sensitive to pleasure. Do you know Claude Bernard?"

"No."

"He was a great scientist. He said that he didn't hesitate to recognize
woman's supremacy in the domain of physical and moral sensibility."

Nantueil; unhooking her stays, replied:

"If he meant by that that all women are sensitive, he was indeed an old
greenhorn. He ought to have seen Fagette; he would soon have discovered
whether it was easy to get anything out of her in the domain--how did he