someone here, I was busy and I didn't
have time to assemble pretty speeches. Not having set a date sooner? I
told you our relation necessitates precautions, and we can't see each
other very often. I think I gave you clearly to understand my
motives--"

"I am so stupid that I probably did not understand them. You spoke to me
of 'family reasons,' I believe."

"Yes."

"Rather vague."

"Well, I couldn't go into detail and tell you that--"

He stopped, asking himself whether the time had come to break decisively
with her, but he remembered that he wanted her aid in getting
information about Docre.

"That what? Tell me."

He shook his head, hesitating, not to tell her a lie, but to insult and
humiliate her.

"Well," he went on, "since you force me to do it, I will confess, at
whatever cost, that I have had a mistress for several years--I add that
our relations are now purely amical--"

"Very well," she interrupted, "your family reasons are sufficient."

"And then," he pursued, in a lower tone, "if you wish to know all,
well--I have a child by her."

"A child! Oh, you poor dear." She rose. "Then there is nothing for me to
do but withdraw."

But he seized her hands, and, at the same time satisfied with the
success of his deception and ashamed of his brutality, he begged her to
stay awhile. She refused. Then he drew her to him, kissed her hair, and
cajoled her. Her troubled eyes looked deep into his.

"Ah, then!" she said. "No, let me undress."

"Not for the world!"

"Yes!"

"Oh, the scene of the other night beginning all over again," he
murmured, sinking, overwhelmed, into a chair. He felt borne down,
burdened by an unspeakable weariness.

He undressed beside the fire and warmed himself while waiting for her to
get to bed. When they were in bed she enveloped him with her supple,
cold limbs.

"Now is it true that I am to come here no more?"

He did not answer, but understood that she had no intention of going
away and that he had to do with a person of the staying kind.

"Tell me."

He buried his head in her breast to keep from having to answer.

"Tell me in my lips."

He beset her furiously, to make her keep silent, then he lay disabused,
weary, happy that it was over. When they lay down again she put her arm
about his neck and ran her tongue around in his mouth like an auger, but
he paid little heed to caresses and remained feeble and pathetic. Then
she bent over, reached him, and he groaned.