behind her could see that she was crying. She wept
noiselessly, as women weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There
was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which
was hidden and stifled by her fingers.

But the Comte de Mascaret thought that the situation was lasting too
long, and he touched her on the shoulder. That contact recalled her to
herself, as if she had been burned, and getting up, she looked straight
into his eyes. "This is what I have to say to you. I am afraid of
nothing, whatever you may do to me. You may kill me if you like. One of
your children is not yours, and one only; that I swear to you before God,
who hears me here. That was the only revenge that was possible for me in
return for all your abominable masculine tyrannies, in return for the
penal servitude of childbearing to which you have condemned me. Who was
my lover? That you never will know! You may suspect every one, but you
never will find out. I gave myself to him, without love and without
pleasure, only for the sake of betraying you, and he also made me a
mother. Which is the child? That also you never will know. I have seven;
try to find out! I intended to tell you this later, for one has not
avenged oneself on a man by deceiving him, unless he knows it. You have
driven me to confess it today. I have now finished."

She hurried through the church toward the open door, expecting to hear
behind her the quick step: of her husband whom she had defied and to be
knocked to the ground by a blow of his fist, but she heard nothing and
reached her carriage. She jumped into it at a bound, overwhelmed with
anguish and breathless with fear. So she called out to the coachman:
"Home!" and the horses set off at a quick trot.

II

The Comtesse de Mascaret was waiting in her room for dinner time as a
criminal sentenced to death awaits the hour of his execution. What was
her husband going to do? Had he come home? Despotic, passionate, ready
for any violence as he was, what was he meditating, what had he made up
his mind to do? There was no sound in the house, and every moment she
looked at the clock. Her lady's maid had come and dressed her for the
evening and had then left the room again. Eight o'clock struck and almost
at the same moment there were two knocks at the door, and the butler came
in and announced dinner.

"Has the count come in?"

"Yes, Madame la Comtesse. He is in the diningroom."

For a little momen