Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/22

 she would take tea with the Princesse de Laumes. Some vague fear had caused her to change her mind; some instinctive and minatory doubt drove her rather to visit the Rue de la Pompe. She passed the concierge without a challenge as she had passed her so many times before, ascended the stairs to the second storey, and inserted her key in the door of his apartment. In the salon she had found them: Mlle. Desparges in her chemise, he in his calecon. She had been ready to retire, to forget what she had seen. Why had she come at all? Then she could have pretended not to know. It was too late. Her pride proved stronger than her desire: she had reproached him, even cursed him. He had laughed, stroking his paltry blond moustache, and, turning to Mlle. Desparges, had muttered: Quelle vieille gueuse! Blind with fury and pain she had fled. Two days went by without a word from him. How much she loved him! What difference could it make to her if he loved this other? It was her supreme humiliation to be aware that nothing he could do had the power to kill her desire for him. She must see him again. She had sent him a petit bleu. No reply. Again she visited the apartment in the Rue de la Pompe. She found the rooms in the greatest disorder; all his clothes were gone. He had, it was fairly obvious, decamped. She recalled that three weeks earlier, at his urgent request—he could not, he had asserted, continually be asking a woman for money—she had established an