Addie was sitting with Mrs. van Does, in the little back-verandah, when they heard a carriage rattle up in front of the house. They smiled at each other and rose from their seats: "I shall leave you to yourselves," said Mrs. van Does. And she disappeared, to drive round the town in a dog-cart and do business among her friends. Léonie entered: "Where is Mrs. van Does?" she asked, for she always behaved as though it were the first time. It was her great charm. He knew this and answered: "She has just gone out. She will be sorry to have missed you." He spoke like this because he knew that she liked it: the ceremonial opening each time, to preserve above all things the freshness of their liaison. They now sat down in the little, shut-in middle gallery, side by side on a settee. The settee was covered with a cretonne displaying many-coloured flowers; on the white walls were a few cheap fans and kakemonos; and on either side of a little looking-glass stood a console-table with an imitation bronze statue, two nondescript knights, each with one leg advanced and a spear in his hand. Through the glass door the musty little back-verandah showed, with its damp, yellow-green pillars, its flower-pots, also yellow-green, with a few withered rose-trees; and behind this was the damp, neglected little garden, with a couple of lean coco-palms, hanging their leaves like broken feathers. He now took her in his arms and drew her to him, but she pushed him away gently: "Doddie is becoming unbearable," she said. "Something must be done." "How so?" "She must leave the house. She is so irritable that there's no living with her." "You tease her, you know." She shrugged her shoulders; she had been put out by a recent scene with her step-daughter: "I never used to tease her. She was fond of me and we got on all right together. Now she flies out at the least thing. It's your fault. Those everlasting evening walks, which lead to nothing, upset her nerves." "Perhaps it's just as well that they lead to nothing," he murmured, with his little laugh, the laugh of the tempter. "But I can't break with her, you know: it would make her unhappy. And I can't bear to make a woman unhappy." She laughed scornfully: "Yes, you're so good-natured. From sheer good-nature you would scatter your favours broadcast. Anyway, she'll have to go." "Go? Where to?" "Don't ask such silly questions!" she exclaimed, angrily, roused out of her usual indifference. "She'll have to go, somewhere or other, I don't care where. You know, when I say a thing, it's done. And this is going to be done." He was now clasping her in his arms: "You're so angry. You're not a bit pretty like that." In her temper, she at first refused to let him kiss her: but, as he did not like these tempers and was well aware of the irresistible power of his comely, Moorish virility, he mastered her with rough, smiling violence and held her so tight to him that she was unable to stir: