cause such an excellent
person as Mademoiselle Elaine any unhappiness. Look here, you disgust me
with your banknotes and your dirty stories, and I don't choose to say
what you ought to wear on your head!"

She turned her back on me and hurried off, and her insolence, that
indignant reply which she had given me, rejoiced me to the depths of my
heart, like soothing balm that lulls the pain.

I should have liked to have called her back, and told her that it was
all a joke, that I was devotedly in love with my wife, that I was always
on the watch to hear her praised, but she was already out of sight, and
I felt that I was ridiculous and mean, that I had lowered myself by what
I had done, and I swore that I would profit by such a humiliating
lesson, and for the future show myself to Elaine as the trusting and
ardent husband that she deserved, and I thought myself cured, altogether
cured....

And yet, I was again the prey to the same bad thoughts, to the same
doubts, and persuaded that that girl had lied to me just like all other
women lie when they are on the defensive, that she made fun of me, that
perhaps _some one_ had foreseen this scene and had told her what to say
and made sure of her silence, just as her complicity had been gained.
Thus I shall always knock up against some barrier, and struggle in this
wretched darkness, and this mire from which I cannot extricate myself!

PART XII

Nobody knew anything. Neither the Superior of the Convent where she had
been brought up until she was sixteen, nor the servants who had waited
on her, nor the governesses who had finished her education, could
remember that Elaine had been difficult to check or teach, or that she
had had any other ideas than those of her age. She had certainly shown
no precocious coquetry and disquieting instincts; she had had no
equivocal cousinly relationships, when if the bridle is left on their
neck at all, and one of them has learned at school what love is, the two
big children yield to the fatal law of sex, and begin the inevitable
eclogue of Daphne and Chole over again.

However, Oh! I felt it too much for it to be nothing but a chimera and a
mirage, it was no _virgin_ who threw her arms round my neck so lovingly,
and who returned my first kisses so _deliciously_, who was attracted by
my society, who gave no signs of surprise and uttered no complaint, who
appeared to forget everything when in my society. No, no, a thousand
times no, that cou