happy to see me suffer, happy above all to see a man reduced to her own level, begging servilely to her.
"For just one minute, Celestine. I'll just look at her and go away!"
"No, no, Monsieur! She'll scold me!"
The ringing of a bell was heard. I heard the noise of it quicken.
"You see, Monsieur, she is calling me!"
"Well, now! Celestine, tell her that if she does not come to my house by six o'clock, if she does not write to me by six o'clock. . . tell her that I am going to kill myself! Six o'clock, Celestine! Don't forget now. . . tell her that I am going to kill myself!"
"All right, Monsieur!"
The door was shut behind me with the clang of a chained lock.
It occurred to me to see Gabrielle Bernier, to tell her my troubles, to ask her advice, and use her offices for a reconciliation with Juliette. Gabrielle was finishing breakfast with a friend of hers, a short, skinny woman of dark complexion, with a pointed chin like a mouse which when speaking seemed always to be nibbling at something. In a morning robe of white silk, soiled and rumpled, her hair kept from falling by a comb stuck across it on top of her head, her elbows resting on the table, Gabrielle was smoking a cigarette and sipping chartreuse from a glass.
"Why, Jean! And so you have come back?"
She showed me into her dressing room which was very untidy. At the very first words which I spoke of Juliette, she exclaimed:
"Why. . . don't you know? We have not been on speaking terms for two months since the time she beat me out of a consul, my dear, an American Consul, who paid me five thousand a month! Yes, she beat
