Félicie entered the room, her hair in disorder, her eyes shining, her cheeks white, her bruised lips a vivid red; she was tired, indifferent, mute, happy and lovely, seeming to guard beneath her cloak, which she held wrapped about her with both hands, some remnant of warmth and voluptuous pleasure.
"I was beginning to be worried," said her mother. "Aren't you going to unfasten your cloak?"
"I'm hungry," she replied. She dropped into a chair before the little round table. Throwing her cloak over the back of the chair, she revealed her slender figure in its little black schoolgirl's dress, and, resting her left elbow on the oil-cloth table-cover, she proceeded to stick her fork into the sliced sausage.
"Did everything go off well to-night?" asked Madame Nanteuil.
"You see Chevalier has come to keep you company. It is kind of him, isn't it?"
"Oh, Chevalier! Well, let him come to the table."
And, without replying further to her mother's questions, she began to eat, greedy and charming, like Ceres in the old woman's house. Then she pushed aside her plate, and leaning back in her chair, with half-closed eyes, and parted lips, she smiled a smile that was akin to a kiss.
Madame Nanteuil, having drunk her glass of mulled wine, rose to her feet.
"You will excuse me, Monsieur Chevalier, I have my accounts to bring up to date."
This was the formula which she usually employed to announce that she was going to bed.
Left alone with Félicie, Chevalier said to her angrily:
"I know I'm a fool and a groveller; but I'm going mad for love of you. Do you hear, Félicie?"
"I should think I do hear. You needn't shout like that!"
He drew nearer to her, dragging his chair with him.
"You came in at twenty-five minutes past one. It was Ligny who saw you home, I know it. He brought you back in a cab, I heard it stop outside the house."
She remained silent, and he repeated, in an urgent, almost appealing tone:
Had she been so inclined, she might, with a phrase, with a single word, with a tiny movement of head or shoulders, have rendered him perfectly submissive, and almost happy. But she maintained a malicious silence. With compressed lips and a far-off look in her eyes, she seemed as though lost in a dream.