Her first idea was to ask her husband for these fifty thousand francs, but it was only with a feeling of repugnance that she decided to do so. On the last occasions that he had entered her room to bring her some money he had printed fresh kisses on her neck, taking hold of her hands and talking about his affection. Women have acute powers of perception which enable them to guess men's feelings. So she expected some demand on his side, some tacit bargain concluded with a smile. And, indeed, when she asked him for the fifty thousand francs, he cried out, declared that Larsonneau would never lend such a sum, and that he himself was still too embarrassed. Then changing his tone, as if conquered and seized with sudden emotion: "One cannot refuse you anything," he murmured; "I will run about Paris and accomplish the impossible. I want you to be pleased, my dear." And setting his lips to her ear and kissing her hair, he added, in a slightly trembling voice-- "I will bring you the money to-morrow evening, here in your room--without any note to sign." But she hastily said that she was not in a hurry, that she did not wish to trouble him so much. He, who had just set all his heart in that dangerous, "without any note," which had escaped him and which he regretted, did not appear to have encountered a disagreeable refusal. He rose up saying: "Very well, I am at your disposal. I will find you the sum when the moment arrives. Larsonneau will be for nothing in it, you understand. It is a present which I mean to make you." He smiled with a good natured air. She remained in a state of cruel anguish. She felt she would lose the little equilibrium left her, if she surrendered herself to her husband. It was her last pride to be married to the father and to be only the son's wife. Often, when Maxime seemed to her to be cold, she tried to make him understand the situation by very transparent allusions; it is true that the young man, whom she expected to see fall at her feet after this revelation, remained altogether indifferent, imagining, no doubt, that she merely wished to reassure him as to the possibility of a meeting between his father and himself in the grey silk room.