re? Is he bloody well making game of me now?"

Bosc, however, made his appearance quietly enough, and the rehearsal
began again just as Labordette was taking the count away with him. The
latter was tremulous at the thought of seeing Nana once more. After the
rupture had taken place between them there had been a great void in his
life. He was idle and fancied himself about to suffer through the sudden
change his habits had undergone, and accordingly he had let them take
him to see Rose. Besides, his brain had been in such a whirl that he had
striven to forget everything and had strenuously kept from seeking
out Nana while avoiding an explanation with the countess. He thought,
indeed, that he owed his dignity such a measure of forgetfulness.
But mysterious forces were at work within, and Nana began slowly to
reconquer him. First came thoughts of her, then fleshly cravings and
finally a new set of exclusive, tender, well-nigh paternal feelings.

The abominable events attendant on their last interview were gradually
effacing themselves. He no longer saw Fontan; he no longer heard the
stinging taunt about his wife's adultery with which Nana cast him out of
doors. These things were as words whose memory vanished. Yet deep
down in his heart there was a poignant smart which wrung him with such
increasing pain that it nigh choked him. Childish ideas would occur to
him; he imagined that she would never have betrayed him if he had really
loved her, and he blamed himself for this. His anguish was becoming
unbearable; he was really very wretched. His was the pain of an
old wound rather than the blind, present desire which puts up with
everything for the sake of immediate possession. He felt a jealous
passion for the woman and was haunted by longings for her and her alone,
her hair, her mouth, her body. When he remembered the sound of her voice
a shiver ran through him; he longed for her as a miser might have done,
with refinements of desire beggaring description. He was, in fact, so
dolorously possessed by his passion that when Labordette had begun to
broach the subject of an assignation he had thrown himself into his
arms in obedience to irresistible impulse. Directly afterward he had, of
course, been ashamed of an act of self-abandonment which could not but
seem very ridiculous in a man of his position; but Labordette was one who
knew when to see and when not to see things, and he gave a further proof
of his tact when he left the