"If you don't answer, you are a coward! But I'll expose you!" And he struck a match.

The blaze lit up the room.

There was no one in the room! Raoul, first turning the key in the door, lit the gas-jets.
He went into the dressing-closet, opened the cupboards, hunted about, felt the walls with his moist hands.

Nothing! "Look here!" he said, aloud.

"Am I going mad ?" He stood for ten minutes listening to the gas flaring in the silence of the empty room; lover though he was, he did not even think of stealing a ribbon that would have given him the perfume of the woman he loved.
He went out, not knowing what he was doing nor where he was going.