Then, the door having closed behind them, Sandoz, beside himself, cried out: ‘That’s the end! The journalist was bound to call the others abortions--yes, the journalist who, after patching up articles, has fallen to trading upon public credulity! Ah! luckily there’s Mathilde the Avengeress!’ Of the guests Christine and Claude alone were left. The latter, since the drawing-room had been growing empty, had remained ensconced in the depths of an arm-chair, no longer speaking, but overcome by that species of magnetic slumber which stiffened him, and fixed his eyes on something far away beyond the walls. He protruded his face, a convulsive kind of attention seemed to carry it forward; he certainly beheld something invisible, and heard a summons in the silence. Christine having risen in her turn, and apologised for being the last to leave, Henriette took hold of her hands, repeated how fond she was of her, begged her to come and see her frequently, and to dispose of her in all things as she would with a sister. But Claude’s sorrowful wife, looking so sadly charming in her black dress, shook her head with a pale smile. ‘Come,’ said Sandoz in her ear, after giving a glance at Claude, ‘you mustn’t distress yourself like that. He has talked a great deal, he has been gayer this evening. He’s all right.’ But in a terrified voice she answered: ‘No, no; look at his eyes--I shall tremble as long as he has his eyes like that. You have done all you could, thanks. What you haven’t done no one will do. Ah! how I suffer at being unable to hope, at being unable to do anything!’ Then in a loud tone she asked: ‘Are you coming, Claude?’ She had to repeat her question twice, for at first he did not hear her; he ended by starting, however, and rose to his feet, saying, as if he had answered the summons from the horizon afar off: ‘Yes, I’m coming, I’m coming.’ When Sandoz and his wife at last found themselves alone in the drawing-room, where the atmosphere now was stifling--heated by the lights and heavy, as it were, with melancholy silence after all the outbursts of the quarrelling--they looked at one another and let their arms fall, quite heart-rent by the unfortunate issue of their dinner party. Henrietta tried to laugh it off, however, murmuring: ‘I warned you, I quite understood--’