“I repeat the expression,” he very quickly interrupted me. Another period of silence followed. I could see that a combat between most contradictory sentiments was taking place in him. What he had to tell me wounded his vanity sorely. On the other hand the same vanity desired to wreak upon Madam de Bonnivet the immediate vengeance of which he had spoken, and I alone was able to help him effectively. But this man, who was usually master of himself, had just been so completely overwhelmed by an affront, which was all the harder for him to bear as he was unprepared for it. His anger was very great, and he went on in a hissing voice which vibrated with absolute sincerity: “Yes, a dirty trick. I stand by the expression, and I am almost happy to have to do so, for it constitutes a hold over her. Listen,” he went on, putting his hand on my arm, and pressing it as he spoke. “I called upon Madam de Bonnivet directly after lunch to-day. I was uneasy. It is in vain that we know that women are like cats, and always fall on their feet, keeping something in their disposition with which to twist a husband who loves them round their fingers when and as often as they please—do you understand me?—we have to be so very careful! I was afraid that Bonnivet had made a scene with his wife after Camille’s escapade last evening. Now you will admire my foolishness and cease to reproach me with heartlessness. For once I obeyed my poor heart and it was a success! So I called upon her and was received in the small drawing-room, which you know, by the woman, reclining in a long chair, clad in a thin dressing-gown. You can imagine that clad in lace, with just enough light to give her a shadowy charm like a phantom, she looked like a picture of the ideal capable of bewitching a lover who is about to be dismissed. Listen: 'Have you a headache?’ I asked her. 'I ought to have one at least,’ she replied, looking at me with eyes I cannot describe—eyes in which there was hatred and fury; but at the same time they were cold and venomous eyes. 'You have the audacity,’ she continued, 'to return here after what took place yesterday.’ I was so dumbfounded by this reception that I had no answer ready. She was making me responsible for the insult Camille had levelled at her!” “It is a little severe,” I said, laughing in spite of myself at this prodigious change of front, and the sheepish look of the pseudo Don Juan before this surprising display of feminine malice. “Between ourselves you well earned it.”