All that week she retained the feeling of having done a good action--or, as she would have expressed it, had she expressed it at all--driven a good bargain with Fate. At the end of the week “Papa,” as the girls in the office called the head of the room, waited for her and asked her to spend the Sunday afternoon with him. It was his birthday, and he and she would celebrate it with a little Festivity. She did not look at him for fear she should laugh, for, taller than he by inches, she caught the sparkle of the electric light reflected on the top of his bald head. She asked, with averted face, “Will there be many invitations!” “But no--you and I alone, naturally!” She shook her head slowly from side to side as she hooked her fur under her chin and surveyed herself in the little glass that hung on the door of the girl’s lobby. “But you promised last time that there should be other times----” His voice had risen, his eyes darkened. It was wonderful what malignity could still reside in a little old man. Something stronger still inhabited Madeleine, since those few hours she had spent with Skene. Once again the blood in her veins had run like molten honey, and she, no spendthrift of herself, had felt in every limb as she gave herself up utterly: “This is right--right--right!” She was in no mood for senile trifling, and turned on him with the arrogance of youth, blazing, magnificent: “And now I promise you there will not!” and left him, breathless and a little afraid. * * * * * Another week passed. Madeleine became uneasy. The strongest emotional impression will not last. The time she had had with Skene began to fade into the background. It had been such a minute. It had no result. Instead of feeling perversely resentful against Georges, she now felt so against both of them. Skene neither wrote nor made any sign. He did not even give her the dubious satisfaction of obliterating the shame she felt at Georges’ neglect. All this lay, a dumb ache, in her uncritical soul. But she had more immediate cause for annoyance. She became conscious that she was being looked at, whispered about. It did nothing more than ruffle the surface of her self-confidence, but when she and Cécile Blanquart went to the cinema together--she hardly noticed a half-unwillingness on Cécile’s part, and that the other girls who often accompanied them had made excuses--she was brought face to face with the matter. Cécile said shyly, in the melodious darkness of the one-franc seats, where one had to keep one’s hands in one’s lap, because so many soldiers were lonely: “You know what they are saying about you at the office?” “No--what?” “Oh--I daren’t tell you!”