toxicated, for the allegory of Eve is an immortal
myth, that repeats itself, through every century and in every clime.

Since her entrance into society, Madame de Bergenheim had formed the
habit of keeping late hours. When the minute details of her toilette
for the night were over, and she had confided her beautiful body to the
snowy sheets of her couch, some new novel or fashionable magazine helped
her wile away the time until sleep came to her. Christian left his room,
like a good country gentleman, at sunrise; he left it either for the
chase--or to oversee workmen, who were continually being employed
upon some part of his domain. Ordinarily, he returned only in time for
dinner, and rarely saw Clemence except between that time and supper, at
the conclusion of which, fatigued by his day's work, he hastened to seek
the repose of the just. Husband and wife, while living under the same
roof, were thus almost completely isolated from each other; night for
one was day for the other.

By the haste with which Clemence shortened her preparations for the
night, one would have said that she must have been blessed with an
unusually sleepy sensation. But when she lay in bed, with her head under
her arm, like a swan with his neck under his wing, and almost in the
attitude of Correggio's Magdalen, her eyes, which sparkled with a
feverish light, betrayed the fact that she had sought the solitude of
her bed in order to indulge more freely in deep meditation.

With marvelous fidelity she went over the slightest events of the
day, to which by a constant effort of willpower, she had seemed so
indifferent. First, she saw Gerfaut with his face covered with blood,
and the thought of the terrible sensation which this sight caused her
made her heart throb violently. She then recalled him as she next saw
him, in the drawing-room by her husband's side, seated in the very
chair that she had left but a moment before. This trifling circumstance
impressed her; she saw in this a proof of sympathetic understanding, a
sort of gift of second sight which Octave possessed, and which in her
eyes was so formidable a weapon. According to her ideas, he must have
suspected that this was her own favorite chair and have seized it for
that reason, just as he would have loved to take her in his arms.

For the first time, Clemence had seen together the man to whom she
belonged and the man whom she regarded somewhat as her property. For,
by one of those arrangem