Beautiful! Oh, she was beautiful! Like the very demon of unlawful love, and yet she was but an outline against the shining rectangle of the door--a motionless shadow, but a shadow as supple as a movement. For Emma in repose, always seemed as if she had paused in the middle of a dance, and was even continuing it through some strange spell, so completely did the sight of her make a harmony--that harmony of the wanton bayaderes, whose only miming is love-making, and who cannot move in their undulating, quivering motions, without shaking their locks, nor make the least little gesture without a suggestion of voluptuousness. Life was boiling in my veins! My senses whirled. It was like a tide of passion rising from out the depths of the ages. Emma! In the madman’s room! Heavens! With that brute! The wretched girl! I could have killed her. You will say that I did not know anything, that my suspicions were groundless. Ah, then, you do not know that impulsive gait, that sly and hungry look of women who are going stealthily to a sweetheart. It maddened me. The pretty girl, as she hastened to this ignoble scene, brushed the curtain with the swish of her skirt. I stood before her barring the path. She gave a gasp of terror. I thought she was going to faint. Barbe showed her great round eyes, and fled in panic. Then, like a fool, I gave the reason for my exploit. “Why are you going to that madman’s room?” My words sounded artificial, broken. “Tell me--Why? In God’s name, tell me?” I had flung myself upon her, and twisted her wrists. She gave a humble moan of complaint, and swayed in my grasp. I squeezed the soft, firm flesh of her arms, as if I were throttling two doves, and bending over her agonized eyes, I said: “Well, tell me why?” She looked me up and down in defiance, and then said: “Well, what about it? You know perfectly well that Macbeth was my lover. Lerne gave you to understand that in my presence on the day of your arrival.” “Is _that_ Macbeth--that madman?” Emma did not reply, but her astonishment informed me that I had made another mistake in showing my ignorance. “Have I not the right to love him?” she went on. “Do you think you are going to prevent me?” I shook her arms as if they were bell-ropes. “Do you still love him?” “More than ever--do you understand?” “But he is a brute beast.” “There are madmen who think they are gods. He sometimes imagines he is a dog. His lunacy is, perhaps, therefore less grave, and after all....” She smiled mysteriously. One would have said that she wanted to drive me wild. Then followed a scene I dare not describe. * * * * * Well, Barbe made an untimely, but fortunate entrance, coughing as loudly as she could. “Here is Monsieur coming.” Emma dashed from my arms. Lerne was terrorizing her once more. “Off with you! Make haste,” she said. “If he knew, you would be done for, and I, too, most likely. Oh, do go! Go, my little duck! Lerne sticks at nothing.”