this seemed to George irritating from her mouth. She murmured, "It
is so sweet to love," like the village maiden at a theater.

Then she exasperated him by the clumsiness of her caresses. Having
become all at once sensual beneath the kisses of this young fellow who
had so warmed her blood, she showed an unskilled ardor and a serious
application that made Du Roy laugh and think of old men trying to learn
to read. When she would have gripped him in her embrace, ardently gazing
at him with the deep and terrible glance of certain aging women,
splendid in their last loves, when she should have bitten him with
silent and quivering mouth, crushing him beneath her warmth and weight,
she would wriggle about like a girl, and lisp with the idea of being
pleasant: "Me love 'ou so, ducky, me love 'ou so. Have nice lovey-lovey
with 'ittle wifey."

He then would be seized with a wild desire to take his hat and rush out,
slamming the door behind him.

They had frequently met at the outset at the Rue de Constantinople; but
Du Roy, who dreaded a meeting there with Madame de Marelle, now found a
thousand pretexts for refusing such appointments. He had then to call on
her almost every day at her home, now to lunch, now to dinner. She
squeezed his hand under the table, held out her mouth to him behind the
doors. But he, for his part, took pleasure above all in playing with
Susan, who amused him with her whimsicalities. In her doll-like frame
was lodged an active, arch, sly, and startling wit, always ready to show
itself off. She joked at everything and everybody with biting readiness.
George stimulated her imagination, excited it to irony and they
understood one another marvelously. She kept appealing to him every
moment, "I say, Pretty-boy. Come here, Pretty-boy."

He would at once leave the mother and go to the daughter, who would
whisper some bit of spitefulness, at which they would laugh heartily.

However, disgusted with the mother's love, he began to feel an
insurmountable repugnance for her; he could no longer see, hear, or
think of her without anger. He ceased, therefore, to visit her, to
answer her letters, or to yield to her appeals. She understood at length
that he no longer loved her, and suffered terribly. But she grew
insatiable, kept watch on him, followed him, waited for him in a cab
with the blinds drawn down, at the door of the office, at the door of
his dwelling, in the streets through which she hoped he might pass.