She was a slut, m'sieu'--did I not know her? Did Ma'm'selle Slut
not wait at table in this house and lead the men a dance here night and
day-day and night till I found it out! Well, off he went with the slut,
and left the lady behind. . . . You men, you treat women so."
Jean Jacques put out a hand as though to argue with her. "Sometimes it
is the other way," he retorted. "Most of us have seen it like that."
"Well, for sure, you're right enough there, m'sieu'," was the response.
"I've got nothing to say to that, except that it's a man that runs away
with a woman, or that gets her to leave her husband when she does go.
There's always a man that says, 'Come along, I'm the better chap for
you.'"
Jean Jacques wearily turned his head away towards the cage where his
canary was beginning to pipe its evening lay.
"It all comes to the same thing in the end," he said pensively; and then
he who had been so quiet since he came to the little hotel--Glozel's,
it was called--began to move about the room excitedly, running his
fingers through his still bushy hair, which, to his credit, was always
as clean as could be, burnished and shiny even at his mid-century period.
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