cting a contempt which would not allow
him to compromise himself even by a word with this slut.

She began to laugh an angry laugh, and said: "So you are dumb, then?
Perhaps the lady has bitten your tongue off?"

He made an angry movement, and exclaimed, in an exasperated tone: "What
do you mean by speaking to me? Be off, or I will have you locked up."

Then, with fiery eye and swelling bosom, she screeched out: "So that's
it, is it? Ah! you lout. When a man sleeps with a woman the least he can
do is to nod to her. It is no reason because you are with someone else
that you should cut me to-day. If you had only nodded to me when I
passed you just now, I should have left you alone. But you wanted to do
the grand. I'll pay you out! Ah, so you won't say good evening when you
meet me!"

She would have gone on for a long time, but Madame de Marelle had opened
the door of the box and fled through the crowd, blindly seeking the way
out. Duroy started off in her rear and strove to catch her up, while
Rachel, seeing them flee, yelled triumphantly: "Stop her, she has stolen
my sweetheart."

People began to laugh. Two gentlemen for fun seized the fugitive by the
shoulders and sought to bring her back, trying, too, to kiss her. But
Duroy, having caught her up, freed her forcibly and led her away into
the street. She jumped into an empty cab standing at the door. He jumped
in after her, and when the driver asked, "Where to, sir?" replied,
"Wherever you like."

The cab slowly moved off, jolting over the paving stones. Clotilde,
seized by a kind of hysterical attack, sat choking and gasping with her
hands covering her face, and Duroy neither knew what to do nor what to
say. At last, as he heard her sobbing, he stammered out: "Clo, my dear
little Clo, just listen, let me explain. It is not my fault. I used to
know that woman, some time ago, you know--"

She suddenly took her hands from her face, and overcome by the wrath of
a loving and deceitful woman, a furious wrath that enabled her to
recover her speech, she pantingly jerked out, in rapid and broken
sentences: "Oh!--you wretch--you wretch--what a scoundrel you are--can
it be possible? How shameful--O Lord--how shameful!" Then, getting
angrier and angrier as her ideas grew clearer and arguments suggested
themselves to her, she went on: "It was with my money you paid her,
wasn't it? And I was giving him money--for that creature. Oh, the
scoundrel!" She seemed for a few minutes