The Kill

She thus arrived of her own accord at the point toward which he had been gently leading her since the begi

Larso

Saccard would gladly have sought out a different partner, but he was still worried about the fake inventory that Larso

Renée, seeing that her husband was making no move to come out of the fireplace and finding it harder and harder to make out his voice, finally said, “I’ll go see Larso

At that point he gave up struggling with the log.

“It’s been taken care of, my dear,” he replied with a smile. “Don’t I anticipate all your desires? . . . I saw Larso

“And he promised to give you the 136,000 francs?” she asked anxiously.

Between the two burning logs he made a small pile of embers, delicately picking up the tiniest pieces of charcoal with the ends of the tongs and contemplating with an air of satisfaction the heap he was constructing with infinite skill.

“Now, hold on a moment!” he murmured. “A hundred and thirty-six thousand francs is quite a large sum. . . . Larso

He paused, blinking his eyes and rebuilding a corner of the pile that had just crumbled. This game was begi

Her husband docilely obeyed. Then he said, “He can only come up with 50,000 francs. That’s still a nice advance. . . . But he doesn’t want to mix this business up with the Charo

And having placed a sharp-pointed ember atop the pile, he folded his hands over the tongs and fixed his wife with a stare.

“Eighty thousand francs!” she exclaimed. “But that’s robbery! . . . Are you advising me to do something that foolish?”

“No,” he said curtly. “But if you’re in dire need of cash, I won’t forbid it.”

He got up as if to leave. Renée, torn by indecision, looked at her husband and at the bill he’d left on the fireplace. Then she took her poor head in her hands and murmured, “Oh, these business matters! . . . My head is splitting this morning. . . . Look, I’m going to sign this note for 80,000 francs. If I didn’t, I would become ill. I know myself. I’d spend the day in dreadful agony, worrying about what to do. . . . If I’m going to be foolish, I’d rather do it right away. It will ease the pain.”

She said she would ring for someone to bring the necessary forms, but he insisted on performing this service himself. He must have had the papers in his pocket, because he was gone for barely two minutes. While she was writing on a small table he had pushed close to the fireplace, he examined her with eyes bright with astonished desire. It was quite hot in the room, and the fragrance of the bedclothes and the young woman’s morning toilette still hung in the air. While talking she had allowed the dressing gown in which she had wrapped herself to fall open, and, as her husband stood in front of her, his eyes slipped from her bowed head and golden hair all the way down to the whiteness of her neck and bosom. He smiled strangely. The hot fire that had burned his face, the closed bedchamber whose heavy air retained a scent of love, the yellow hair and white skin that tempted him with a sort of conjugal disdain, filled his head with dreams, amplified the drama of which he had just played a scene, and stirred a secret and sensuous calculation in his brutal speculator’s flesh.