He had decided on a bold stroke, not wishing to consult Mouret, for fear of some weakness. The first-hand came up, and the story was once more related in a low voice. All the girls were waiting in the expectation of some catastrophe. At last, Madame Aurélie turned round with a solemn air.
"Mademoiselle Baudu!" she called, and her puffy Cæsarian countenance assumed the inexorable sternness of sovereign power: "Go and get paid!"
The terrible phrase rang out loudly in the empty department. Denise stood there pale as a ghost, without saying a word. At last she was able to ask in broken sentences:
Bourdoncle harshly replied that she knew very well, that she had better not provoke any explanation; and he spoke of the cravats, and added that it would be a fine thing if all the young ladies were to receive men down in the basement.
"But it was my brother!" she cried with the grievous anger of an outraged virgin.
Marguerite and Clara began to laugh. Madame Frédéric, usually so discreet, shook her head with an incredulous air. Always her brother! Really it was very stupid! Denise looked round at all of them: at Bourdoncle, who had taken a dislike to her from the first; Jouve, who had stopped to serve as a witness, and from whom she expected no justice; and then at those girls whom she had not been able to soften by nine months of smiling courage, who were happy, in fact, to help in turning her out of doors. What was the use of struggling? what was the use of trying to impose herself on them when none of them liked her? And she went away without a word, not even casting another look at the room where she had so long battled. But as soon as she was alone, before the hall staircase, a deeper sense of suffering filled her heart. No one cared for her, and the sudden thought of Mouret had just deprived her of all resignation. No! no! she could not accept such a dismissal. Perhaps he would believe that villanous story of a rendezvous with a man down in the cellars. At this thought, a feeling of shame tortured her, an anguish with which she had never before been afflicted. She wished to go and see him to explain the matter to him, simply in order to let him know the truth; for she was quite ready to go away as soon as he should know it. And her old fear, the shiver which chilled her whenever she was in his presence, suddenly developed into an ardent desire to see him, not to leave the house in fact without telling him that she had never belonged to another.