“I must speak to you,” she went on.

Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.

“No, no! Down there, in our home!”

And they went to their room at the Hôtel de Boulogne.

On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She said to him⁠—

“Léon, you will do me a service?”

And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added⁠—

“Listen, I want eight thousand francs.”

“But you are mad!”

“Not yet.”