XVI

His mouth seemed to be dried up as he spoke.

The commissary replied: “With me, sir; with me alone. I ask you who you are?”

The other was silent. He held the sheet close up to his neck, and rolled his startled eyes. His little, curled-up moustache showed up black upon his blanched face.

The commissary continued: “You will not answer, eh? Then I shall be forced to arrest you. In any case, get up. I will question you when you are dressed.”

The body wriggled in the bed, and the head murmured: “But I cannot, before you.”

The commissary asked: “Why not?”

The other stammered: “Because I am⁠—I am⁠—quite naked.”

Du Roy began to chuckle sneeringly, and picking up a shirt that had fallen onto the floor, threw it onto the bed, exclaiming: “Come, get up. Since you have undressed in my wife’s presence, you can very well dress in mine.”

Then he turned his back, and returned towards the fireplace. Madeleine had recovered all her coolness, and seeing that all was lost, was ready to dare anything. Her eyes glittered with bravado, and twisting up a piece of paper she lit, as though for a reception, the ten candles in the ugly candelabra, placed at the corners of the mantelshelf. Then, leaning against this, and holding out backwards to the dying fire one of her bare feet which she lifted up behind the petticoat, scarcely sticking to her hips, she took a cigarette from a pink paper case, lit it, and began to smoke. The commissary had returned towards her, pending that her accomplice got up.