g you?" he asked, bowing and barely touching with the
tips of his fingers the hand she had extended to him on entering.
"Excuse me, I thought you alone. Will you be pleased to name another
time for the conversation which I take the liberty of demanding?"

"No, no," she replied, not permitting him to finish his sentence. "I was
with Peppino Ardea, who will await me," said she, gently. "Moreover,
you know I am in all things for the immediate. When one has something to
say, it should be said, one, two, three?... First, there is not much to
say, and then it is better said.... There is nothing that will sooner
render difficult easy explanations and embroil the best of friends than
delay and maintaining silence."

"I am very happy to find you in such a mind," replied Boleslas, with
a sarcasm which distorted his handsome face into a smile of atrocious
hatred. The good-nature displayed by her cut him to the heart, and he
continued, already less self-possessed: "It is indeed an explanation
which I think I have the right to ask of you, and which I have come to
claim."

"To claim, my dear?" said the Countess, looking him fixedly in the face
without lowering her proud eyes, in which those imperative words had
kindled a flame.

If she had been admirable the preceding evening in facing as she had
done the return of her discarded lover, on coming direct from the
tete-a-tete with her new one, perhaps, at that moment, she was doubly
so, when she did not have her group of intimate friends to support her.
She was not sure that the madman who confronted her was not armed, and
she believed him perfectly capable of killing her, while she could not
defend herself. But a part had to be played sooner or later, and she
played it without flinching. She had not spoken an untruth in saying
to Peppino Ardea: "I know only one way: to see one's aim and to march
directly to it." She wanted a definitive rupture with Boleslas. Why
should she hesitate as to the means?

She was silent, seeking for words. He continued:

"Will you permit me to go back three months, although that is, it seems,
a long space of time for a woman's memory? I do not know whether you
recall our last meeting? Pardon, I meant to say the last but one, since
we met last night. Do you concede that the manner in which we parted
then did not presage the manner in which we met?"

"I concede it," said the Countess, with a gleam of angry pride in her
eyes, "although I do not very muc