past and think only of the future;
but there were days, consecrated to the memory of some vanished joy,
when she deliberately made it a crime to put on the gown she had worn on
the day she had seen her lover for the first time.

"I am not guilty," she said, "but if I seem guilty to the count it is as
if I were so. Perhaps I am! The Holy Virgin conceived without--"

She stopped. During this moment when her thoughts were misty and her
soul floated in a region of fantasy her naivete made her attribute to
that last look with which her lover transfixed her the occult power of
the visitation of the angel to the Mother of her Lord. This supposition,
worthy of the days of innocence to which her reverie had carried her
back, vanished before the memory of a conjugal scene more odious than
death. The poor countess could have no real doubt as to the legitimacy
of the child that stirred in her womb. The night of her marriage
reappeared to her in all the horror if its agony, bringing in its train
other such nights and sadder days.

"Ah! my poor Chaverny!" she cried, weeping, "you so respectful, so
gracious, YOU were always kind to me."

She turned her eyes to her husband as if to persuade herself that that
harsh face contained a promise of mercy, dearly brought. The count was
awake. His yellow eyes, clear as those of a tiger, glittered beneath
their tufted eyebrows and never had his glance been so incisive. The
countess, terrified at having encountered it, slid back under the great
counterpane and was motionless.

"Why are you weeping?" said the count, pulling away the covering which
hid his wife.

That voice, always a terror to her, had a specious softness at this
moment which seemed to her of good augury.

"I suffer much," she answered.

"Well, my pretty one, it is no crime to suffer; why did you tremble when
I looked at you? Alas! what must I do to be loved?" The wrinkles of his
forehead between the eyebrows deepened. "I see plainly you are afraid of
me," he added, sighing.

Prompted by the instinct of feeble natures the countess interrupted the
count by moans, exclaiming:--

"I fear a miscarriage! I clambered over the rocks last evening and tired
myself."

Hearing those words, the count cast so horribly suspicious a look upon
his wife, that she reddened and shuddered. He mistook the fear of the
innocent creature for remorse.

"Perhaps it is the beginning of a regular childbirth," he said.

"What then?" she said.