She murmured: "Yes, but that will take some time." Then all at once she
framed a plan, and reassured, added softly: "No, listen, I know what to
do; let me act, do not trouble yourself about anything. I will send you
a telegram to-morrow morning."
She smiled now, delighted with her plan, which she would not reveal, and
indulged in a thousand follies. She was very agitated, however, as she
went downstairs, leaning with all her weight on her lover's arm, her
legs trembled so beneath her. They did not meet anyone, though.
As he usually got up late, he was still in bed the next day, when, about
eleven o'clock, the telegraph messenger brought him the promised
telegram. He opened it and read:
"Meet me at five; 127, Rue de Constantinople. Rooms hired by Madame
Duroy.--Clo."
At five o'clock to the minute he entered the doorkeeper's lodge of a
large furnished house, and asked: "It is here that Madame Duroy has
taken rooms, is it not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Will you show me to them, if you please."
The man, doubtless used to delicate situations in which prudence is
necessary, looked him straight in the eyes, and then, selecting one of
the long range of keys, said: "You are Monsieur Duroy?"
"Yes, certainly."
The man opened the door of a small suite of rooms on the ground floor in
front of the lodge. The sitting-room, with a tolerably fresh wall-paper
of floral design, and a carpet so thin that the boards of the floor
could be felt through it, had mahogany furniture, upholstered in green
rep with a yellow pattern. The bedroom was so small that the bed
three-parts filled it. It occupied the further end, stretching from one
wall to the other--the large bed of a furnished lodging-house, shrouded
in heavy blue curtains also of rep, and covered with an eider-down quilt
of red silk stained with suspicious-looking spots.
Duroy, uneasy and displeased, thought: "This place will cost, Lord knows
how much. I shall have to borrow again. It is idiotic what she has
done."
The door opened, and Clotilde came in like a whirlwind, with
outstretched arms and rustling skirts. She was delighted. "Isn't it
nice, eh, isn't it nice? And on the ground floor, too; no stairs to go
up. One could get in and out of the windows without the doorkeeper
seeing one. How we will love one another here!"
He kissed her coldly, not daring to put the question that rose to his
lips. She had placed a large parcel on the little round table in the
middle of the room. She opened it, and took out a cake of soap, a bottle
of scent, a sponge, a box of hairpins, a buttonhook, and a small pair of
curling tongs to set right her fringe, which she got out of curl every
time. And she played at moving in, seeking a place for everything, and
derived great amusement from it.
She kept on chattering as she opened the drawers. "I must bring a little
linen, so as to be able to make a change if necessary. It will be very
convenient. If I get wet, for instance, while I am out, I can run in
here to dry myself. We shall each have one key, beside the one left with
the doorkeeper in case we forget it. I have taken the place for three
months, in your name, of course, since I could not give my own."