ich of them
it is, and I swear that I will forgive you and treat it like the others."

"I have not the right to do so."

"Do you not see that I can no longer endure this life, this thought which
is wearing me out, or this question which I am constantly asking myself,
this question which tortures me each time I look at them? It is driving
me mad."

"Then you have suffered a great deal?" she said.

"Terribly. Should I, without that, have accepted the horror of living by
your side, and the still greater horror of feeling and knowing that there
is one among them whom I cannot recognize and who prevents me from loving
the others?"

"Then you have really suffered very much?" she repeated.

And he replied in a constrained and sorrowful voice:

"Yes, for do I not tell you every day that it is intolerable torture to
me? Should I have remained in that house, near you and them, if I did not
love them? Oh! You have behaved abominably toward me. All the affection
of my heart I have bestowed upon my children, and that you know. I am for
them a father of the olden time, as I was for you a husband of one of the
families of old, for by instinct I have remained a natural man, a man of
former days. Yes, I will confess it, you have made me terribly jealous,
because you are a woman of another race, of another soul, with other
requirements. Oh! I shall never forget the things you said to me, but
from that day I troubled myself no more about you. I did not kill you,
because then I should have had no means on earth of ever discovering
which of our--of your children is not mine. I have waited, but I
have suffered more than you would believe, for I can no longer venture to
love them, except, perhaps, the two eldest; I no longer venture to look
at them, to call them to me, to kiss them; I cannot take them on my knee
without asking myself, 'Can it be this one?' I have been correct in my
behavior toward you for six years, and even kind and complaisant. Tell me
the truth, and I swear that I will do nothing unkind."

He thought, in spite of the darkness of the carriage, that he could
perceive that she was moved, and feeling certain that she was going to
speak at last, he said: "I beg you, I beseech you to tell me" he said.

"I have been more guilty than you think perhaps," she replied, "but I
could no longer endure that life of continual motherhood, and I had only
one means of driving you from me. I lied before God and I lied, with my
hand