He laughed, amused at the story, and encouraged her to talk nonsense, to
chatter, to indulge in all the child's play of conversation which lovers
utter. The nonsense which he thought delightful in the mouth of Madame
de Marelle would have exasperated him in that of Madame Walter.
Clotilde, too, called him "My darling," "My pet," "My own." These words
seemed sweet and caressing. Said by the other woman shortly before, they
had irritated and sickened him. For words of love, which are always the
same, take the flavor of the lips they come from.
But he was thinking, even while amusing himself with this nonsense, of
the seventy thousand francs he was going to gain, and suddenly checked
the gabble of his companion by two little taps with his finger on her
head. "Listen, pet," said he.
"I am going to entrust you with a commission for your husband. Tell him
from me to buy to-morrow ten thousand francs' worth of the Morocco loan,
which is quoted at seventy-two, and I promise him that he will gain from
sixty to eighty thousand francs before three months are over. Recommend
the most positive silence to him. Tell him from me that the expedition
to Tangiers is decided on, and that the French government will guarantee
the debt of Morocco. But do not let anything out about it. It is a State
secret that I am entrusting to you."
She listened to him seriously, and murmured: "Thank you, I will tell my
husband this evening. You can reckon on him; he will not talk. He is a
very safe man, and there is no danger."
But she had eaten all the sweetmeats. She crushed up the bag between her
hands and flung it into the fireplace. Then she said, "Let us go to
bed," and without getting up, began to unbutton George's waistcoat. All
at once she stopped, and pulling out between two fingers a long hair,
caught in a buttonhole, began to laugh. "There, you have brought away
one of Madeleine's hairs. There is a faithful husband for you."
Then, becoming once more serious, she carefully examined on her head the
almost imperceptible thread she had found, and murmured: "It is not
Madeleine's, it is too dark."