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Madame Dobson, who was sitting alone at the piano, jumped up from her stool, and at the farther end of the grand salon Georges and Sidonie rose hastily behind the exotic plants that reared their heads above a table, of whose delicate, slender lines they seemed a prolongation. "Ah! how you frightened me!" said Sidonie, running to meet Risler.
He, on his side, hung his head to avoid her glance. "Risler is an honorable man," she continued, "and when he learned from whom his wife received all her magnificent things " "What!" exclaimed Georges in dismay. "He knows?" "All," Claire replied, lowering her voice. The wretched man turned pale, stammered feebly: "Why, then you?" "Oh! I knew it all before Risler.
It was a genuine relief for poor Madame Chebe when her husband took an omnibus at the office to go and hunt up Delobelle whose hours for lounging were always at his disposal and pour into his bosom all his rancor against his son-in-law and his daughter. The illustrious Delobelle also bore Risler a grudge, and freely said of him: "He is a dastard."
He was very lofty with him, was M. Chebe! In his opinion, a man who worked, as Risler did, ten hours a day, was incapable, when he left his work, of expressing an intelligent idea. Sometimes the designer, coming home worried from the factory, would prepare to spend the night over some pressing work. You should have seen M. Chebe's scandalized expression then!
Still talking, they enter the garden, which is as carefully kept as a public park, with round-topped acacias almost as old as the buildings, and magnificent ivies that hide the high, black walls. Beside Fromont jeune, Risler Aine has the appearance of a clerk making his report to his employer.
He breathed the atmosphere of the day of toil, a hot, stifling atmosphere, heavy with the odor of boiled talc and varnish. The papers spread out on the dryers formed long, rustling paths. On all sides tools were lying about, and blouses hanging here and there ready for the morrow. Risler never walked through the shops without a feeling of pleasure.
The poor man's loneliness throughout those long Sunday afternoons filled her with compassion, and she would come with her little girl to keep him company, knowing by experience how contagious is the sweet joyousness of children. The little one, who could now walk alone, would slip from her mother's arms to run to her friend. Risler would hear the little, hurrying steps.
He said it without enthusiasm, hopelessly, with the satisfaction of a task accomplished, and nothing more. The bell rang for the workmen to return, and Risler went calmly upstairs to resume his work as on other days. In a moment he came down again. In spite of all, that news had excited him more than he cared to show.
Risler did not venture to detain him, thinking that his dear Madame Chorche would pass her Sunday all alone; and so, without an opportunity to say a word to his mistress, the lover went away in the bright sunlight to take an afternoon train, still attended by the husband, who insisted upon escorting him to the station.
As for her, her love was made up of vanity and spite. The thing that she relished above all else was Claire's degradation in her eyes. Ah! if she could only have said to her, "Your husband loves me he is false to you with me," her pleasure would have been even greater. As for Risler, in her view he richly deserved what had happened to him.
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