Sometimes, by dint of exciting their passions, they enjoyed again an hour of unreal ecstasy, followed at once by a mood of fatigue and aversion.
They had tried moonlit nights, walks under the trees in the gentle air of evening, the poetry of riversides veiled in mist, the excitement of public festivities.
Then, one morning, Henrietta said to Paul:
“Will you take me to dine in a cabaret?”
“Of course, darling.”
“In a really well-known cabaret?”
“Of course.”
He looked at her, with a questioning air, quite aware that she was thinking of something that she did not care to say aloud.
She added:
“You know, in a cabaret … how shall I put it? … in a really gay cabaret … in the sort of cabaret where people arrange to meet each other alone?”
He smiled.
“Yes, I understand. In a private room of a fashionable café.”
“That’s it. But a fashionable café where you are known, where you have perhaps already had supper … no … dinner … and don’t you know … you know … I should like … no, I’ll never dare say it.”
“Tell me, darling; what can anything matter, between you and me? We don’t hide little things from each other.”
“No, I dare not.”
“Really now, don’t pretend to be shy. What is it?”
“Well … well … I would like … I would like to be taken for your mistress … and that the waiters, who don’t know that you are married, should suppose me your mistress, and you too … that you should think me your mistress, for one hour, just in that room which must have memories for you. … Don’t you see? And I shall believe, myself, that I am your mistress … I shall be doing a dreadful thing … I shall be deceiving you … with yourself. Don’t you see? It is very wicked. … But I should like … don’t make me blush … I feel myself blushing. … You can’t imagine how it would … would excite me to dine like that with you, in a place that’s not quite nice … in a cabinet particulier where people make love … every evening. … It is very wicked … I’m as red as a peony. Don’t look at me.”
He laughed, very amused, and answered:
“Yes, we’ll go, this evening, to a really smart place, where I am known.”
About seven o’clock they walked up the staircase of a fashionable boulevard café, he all smiles like a conqueror, she shy, veiled, delighted. As soon as they had entered a private room furnished with four armchairs and a vast couch of red velvet, the head waiter, black-clad, came in and presented the card. Paul offered it to his wife.
“What would you like to eat?”
“Oh, but I don’t know what’s the right thing to order here.”
So he read down the list of dishes as he took off his overcoat, which he handed to the footman. Then he said:
“A very spicy dinner—potage bisque—poulet à la diable, râble de lièvre, bomard à l’américaine, salade de légumes bien épicée, and dessert. We will drink champagne.”
The head waiter turned a smiling regard on the young woman. He picked up the card, murmuring:
“Will Monsieur Paul have sweet or dry?”
“Champagne, very dry.”
Henrietta was delighted to observe that this man knew her husband’s name.
They sat side by side on the couch, and began to eat.
They had the light of ten wax candles, reflected in a large mirror marked all over by thousands of names traced on it by diamonds: they flung over the gleaming crystal what looked like an immense spider’s web.
Henrietta drank steadily, to enliven her, though she felt giddy after the first glass. Paul, excited by his memories, kissed his wife’s hand every moment. His eyes shone.
She was oddly excited by this not very reputable place, disturbed, happy, a little wanton but very thrilled. Two grave silent footmen, accustomed to see all and forget all, to present themselves only when necessary, and to remove themselves at moments when emotions ran dangerously high, came and went swiftly and deftly.
By the middle of dinner Henrietta was half drunk, more than half drunk, and Paul, very merry, was madly pressing her knee. She was babbling wildly now, impudently gay, with flushed cheeks and suffused burning eyes.
“Now, Paul, own up, don’t you know I simply must know everything?”
“Well, darling?”
“I daren’t say it.”
“Say anything you want to.”
“Have you had mistresses … many mistresses … before me?”
He hesitated, a little dubious, not sure whether he ought to keep quiet about his triumphs or boast of them.
She added:
“Oh, I implore you, do tell me, have you had ever so many?”
“Well, I’ve had several.”
“How many?”
“Well, I really don’t know … a man can’t really be sure about these things, don’t you know?”
“You didn’t keep count of them?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh, so you must have had ever so many.”
“Of course.”
“But about how many? … only just about?”
“But I haven’t the least idea, darling. Some years I had ever so many, and there were other years when I had very few.”
“How many a year, do you suppose?”
“Sometimes twenty or thirty, sometimes only four or five.”
“Oh, that makes more than a hundred women altogether.”
“Well, yes, about that.”
“Oh, it’s revolting!”
“Why do you call it revolting?”
“Because of course it is revolting, when you think of it … all those women … naked … and always … always the same thing. Oh, how revolting it is, all the same, more than a hundred women!”
He was shocked that she found it disgusting, and answered her with that superior manner which men assume to make women realise that they are talking nonsense.
“Well, upon my word, that’s a queer thing to say; if it’s disgusting to have a hundred women, it is just as disgusting to have one.”
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind.”
“Why not?”
“Because one woman, that is a real union, a real love which holds you to her,
