“Well!” said she, in her quiet way, and with her tradeswoman’s accustomed gracefulness, “you may as well look over the place, as you are not engaged.”
She called one of her clerks, and put Octave under his guidance; then, after having politely replied to a question of Campardon’s that Mademoiselle Gasparine was out on an errand, she turned her back and resumed her work, continuing to give her orders in her gentle and concise voice.
“Not there, Alexandre. Put the silks up at the top. Be careful, those are not the same make!”
Campardon, after hesitating, at length said to Octave that he would call again for him to take him back to dinner. Then, during two hours, the young man went over the warehouse. He found it badly lighted, small, encumbered with stock, which, overflowing from the basement, became heaped up in the corners, leaving only narrow passages between high walls of bales. On several different occasions he ran against Madame Hédouin, busy, and scuttling along the narrowest passages without ever catching her dress in anything. She seemed the very life and soul of the establishment, all the assistants belonging to which obeyed the slightest sign of her white hands. Octave felt hurt that she did not take more notice of him. Towards a quarter to seven, as he was coming up a last time from the basement, he was told that Campardon was on the first floor with Mademoiselle Gasparine. Up there was the hosiery department, which that young lady looked after. But, at the top of the winding staircase, the young man stopped abruptly behind a pyramid of pieces of calico systematically arranged, on hearing the architect talking most familiarly to Gasparine.
“I swear to you it is not so!” cried he, forgetting himself so far as to raise his voice.
“How is she now?” at length inquired the young woman.
“Well! always the same. It comes and goes. She feels that it is all over now. She will never get right again.”
Gasparine resumed, in compassionate tones:
“My poor friend, it is you who are to be pitied. However, as you have been able to manage in another way, tell her how sorry I am to hear that she is still unwell—”
Campardon, without letting her finish, seized hold of her by the shoulders and kissed her roughly on the lips, in the gas-heated air already becoming heavy beneath the low ceiling. She returned his kiss, murmuring: