Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 3.djvu/136

114 looked at each other once. Roger got up first and wished her good night in a calm voice.

"Good night," she replied in cold and hard tones.

Roger has since told me that he would have killed himself that very day if he had not been afraid that his comrades would have guessed the reason for his suicide. He did not wish his memory to he disgraced.

Gabrielle was as gay as usual next day. She seemed, already, to have forgotten the confidences of the previous evening. But Roger became gloomy, capricious and morose. He avoided his friends, and scarcely left his rooms, often passing a whole day without saying a word to his mistress. I attributed his melancholy to an honourable, but excessive sensitiveness, and tried several times to console him; but he put me at a distance by affecting a supreme indifference toward his unhappy partner. One day he even inveighed against the Dutch nation in violent terms, and tried to make me believe that there was not a single honourable man in Holland. All the same, he tried secretly to find out the Dutch lieutenant's relatives; but no one could give him any information about them.

Six weeks after that unlucky game of backgammon Roger found a note in Gabrielle's