"No, no," she replied, not permitting him to finish his sentence. "I was
with Peppino Ardea, who will await me," said she, gently. "Moreover, you
know I am in all things for the immediate. When one has something to
say, it should be said, one, two, three?.... First, there is not much to
say, and then it is better said.... There is nothing that will sooner
render difficult easy explanations and embroil the best of friends than
delay and maintaining silence."

"I am very happy to find you in such a mind," replied Boleslas, with a
sarcasm which distorted his handsome face into a smile of atrocious
hatred. The good-nature displayed by her cut him to the heart, and he
continued, already less self-possessed: "It is indeed an explanation
which I think I have the right to ask of you, and which I have come to
claim."

"To claim, my dear?" said the Countess, looking him fixedly in the face
without lowering her proud eyes, in which those imperative words had
kindled a flame.

If she had been admirable the preceding evening in facing as she had done
the return of her discarded lover, on coming direct from the tete-a-tete
with her new one, perhaps, at that moment, she was doubly so, when she
did not have her group of intimate friends to support her. She was not
sure that the madman who confronted her was not armed, and she believed
him perfectly capable of killing her, while she could not defend herself.
But a part had to be played sooner or later, and she played it without
flinching. She had not spoken an untruth in saying to Peppino Ardea:
"I know only one way: to see one's aim and to march directly to it." She
wanted a definitive rupture with Boleslas. Why should she hesitate as to
the means?