nd they were still so occupied when Paradou returned.

This man's love was unsleeping. The even bluster of the mistral, with
which he had been combating some hours, had not suspended, though it had
embittered, that predominant passion. His first look was for his wife, a
look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and love, that made the
over-blooming brute appear for the moment almost beautiful. She returned
his glance, at first as though she knew him not, then with a swiftly
waxing coldness of intent; and at last, without changing their
direction, she had closed her eyes.

There passed across her mind during that period much that Paradou could
not have understood had it been told to him in words: chiefly the sense
of an enlightening contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the
man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned for and that to
which she had been long exposed like a victim bound upon the altar.
There swelled upon her, swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence
and disgust. She had succumbed to the monster, humbling herself below
animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the semi-divine. It was
in the pang of that humiliating thought that she had closed her eyes.

Paradou--quick, as beasts are quick, to translate silence--felt the
insult through his blood; his inarticulate soul bellowed within him for
revenge. He glanced about the shop. He saw the two indifferent gentlemen
deep in talk, and passed them over: his fancy flying not so high. There
was but one other present, a country lout who stood swallowing his wine,
equally unobserved by all and unobserving; to him he dealt a glance of
murderous suspicion, and turned direct upon his wife. The wine-shop had
lain hitherto, a space of shelter, the scene of a few ceremonial
passages and some whispered conversation, in the howling river of the
wind; the clock had not yet ticked a score of times since Paradou's
appearance; and now, as he suddenly gave tongue, it seemed as though the
mistral had entered at his heels.

"What ails you, woman?" he cried, smiting on the counter.

"Nothing ails me," she replied. It was strange; but she spoke and stood
at that moment like a lady of degree, drawn upward by her aspirations.

"You speak to me, by God, as though you scorned me!" cried the husband.

The man's passion was always formidable; she had often looked on upon
its violence with a thrill, it had been one ingredient in her
fascination; and