When the lace-dealer withdrew the brass knob, she had the habit of putting it in her pocket. She wished to continue parleying. Finally seized with anger herself, and displaying in the depths of her grey eyes the tart acridity of her nature, she cried: "But come, what shall I say to the man?" "That I'm not for sale," replied Renée, who already had one foot on the side-walk. And it seemed to her that she could hear Madame Sidonie muttering as she banged the door: "Eh! get off, you jade! you shall pay me for this!" "By heavens," thought Renée as she again entered her brougham, "I prefer my husband to that." She returned straight home. In the evening she told Maxime not to come; she was poorly, she needed repose. And, on the morrow, when she handed him the fifteen thousand francs for Sylvia's jeweller, she remained embarrassed in presence of his surprise and his questions. Her husband, she said, had done a good stroke of business. From that day forth, however, she became more capricious, she often changed the hour of the appointments which she gave the young fellow, and even she frequently watched for him in the conservatory to send him away. He did not worry himself much about these changes of humour; it pleased him to be an obedient thing in women's hands. What bored him a great deal more was the moral turn which their lovers' meetings took at times. She became quite sad; and it even happened that she had big tears in her eyes. She left off singing the refrain about the "handsome young man" in the _Belle Hélène_, she played the hymns she had learnt at school and asked her lover if he did not think that sin was always punished, sooner or later. "She's decidedly growing old," he thought. "It will be the utmost if she's funny for another year or two."