She smiled with her confident and satisfied smile, and murmured, as she returned his kisses: “And I too—perhaps.”
But he still felt uneasy about the visit of his parents. He had already forewarned his wife, had prepared and lectured her, but he thought fit to do so again.
“You know,” he said, “they are only rustics—country rustics, not theatrical ones.”
She laughed.
“But I know that: you have told me so often enough. Come, get up and let me get up.”
He jumped out of bed, and said, as he drew on his socks:
“We shall be very uncomfortable there, very uncomfortable. There is only an old straw palliasse in my room. Spring mattresses are unknown at Canteleu.”
She seemed delighted.
“So much the better. It will be delightful to sleep badly—beside—beside you, and to be woke up by the crowing of the cocks.”
She had put on her dressing-gown—a white flannel dressing-gown—which Duroy at once recognized. The sight of it was unpleasant to him. Why? His wife had, he was aware, a round dozen of these morning garments. She could not destroy her trousseau in order to buy a new one. No matter, he would have preferred that her bed-linen, her night-linen, her underclothing were not the same she had made use of with the other. It seemed to him that the soft, warm stuff must have retained something from its contact with Forestier.