big a
fool as the others, do you hear!"

He still maintained: "I can swear to you that I am not!"

She laughed so impertinently that he felt his heart beat and a chill run
down his back. For the third time he said:

"I should have seen it!"

She rose, still laughing in the same manner. She slammed the door and
left the room, saying: "Well! if that isn't too much!"

Bondel remained alone, ill at ease. That insolent, provoking laugh had
touched him to the quick. He went outside, walked, dreamed. The
realization of the loneliness of his new life made him sad and morbid.
The neighbor, whom he had met that morning, came to him with outstretched
hands. They continued their walk together. After touching on various
subjects they came to talk of their wives. Both seemed to have something
to confide, something inexpressible, vague, about these beings associated
with their lives; their wives. The neighbor was saying:

"Really, at times, one might think that they bear some particular
ill-will toward their husband, just because he is a husband. I love my
wife--I love her very much; I appreciate and respect her; well!
there are times when she seems to have more confidence and faith in our
friends than in me."

Bondel immediately thought: "There is no doubt; my wife was right!"

When he left this man he began to think things over again. He felt in his
soul a strange confusion of contradictory ideas, a sort of interior
burning; that mocking, impertinent laugh kept ringing in his ears and
seemed to say: "Why; you are just the same as the others, you fool!" That
was indeed bravado, one of those pieces of impudence of which a woman
makes use when she dares everything, risks everything, to wound and
humiliate the man who has aroused her ire. This poor man must also be one
of those deceived husbands, like so many others. He had said sadly:
"There are times when she seems to have more confidence and faith in our
friends than in me." That is how a husband formulated his observations on
the particular attentions of his wife for another man. That was all. He
had seen nothing more. He was like the rest--all the rest!

And how strangely Bondel's own wife had laughed as she said: "You, too
--you, too." How wild and imprudent these creatures are who can
arouse such suspicions in the heart for the sole purpose of revenge!

He ran over their whole life since their marriage, reviewed his mental
list of their acquaintances, to see whether s