The Monster · Chapter 8 (2/2)

He was still smiling, but the smile wholly muscular, was one in which the eyes have no part. The “visitors” whom he affected to ridicule, alarmed him. They were, he knew, quite capable of taking Leilah away. Her presence or absence was quite one to him. Only if she departed, so would her purse.

“Will you not?” he repeated.

“I am going in.”

“Certainly, cara mia. It is as it pleases you. But⁠—”

At this Leilah, who had passed him, turned.

“Well, what?”

“You see, cara mia, supposing I had visitors. Supposing rather I had a visitor. We are only supposing, are we not? Bon! Supposing this visitor happened to be what we call an ancienne, an old flame, an inamorata of mine. Supposing that were so. Do you know what you could do?”

“No,” Leilah from over her shoulder answered. “Nor do I care.”

“Forgive me, cara mia. You mean that you do not care to be informed. Yet you should know, for you could if you wished have me fined. Yes, that is what you could do. You could have me fined.

“But I,” he resumed. “Do you know in similar circumstances what I could do? Do you know rather what the law says I may do? Do you, cara mia? Do you? For really you ought to.”

But Leilah now was approaching the entrance.

“What!” Barouffski exclaimed. “You are not interested? You are really going?”

As he spoke, he bowed. “Bon, à ce soir, cara mia. And a last word. If I may advise, do not be led into indiscretions.”

“Do not,” he repeated, while shrilly from the adjacent church came the voices of boys chanting the final phrase of the Pater Noster:

“Sed libera nos a malo.”

“That is it,” he called at Leilah’s retreating back. “Pray rather to be delivered of them. Otherwise⁠—”

But Leilah now had entered the house.

“Otherwise,” he continued to himself and moving to the kennels, patted the dogs, “otherwise a sojourn in Poland may improve you.”