s desire
than in so charming a creature. Dreams of power, visions of love of his
twentieth year, had now become tangible to him and at forty he stretched
out his feverish hand toward them all.

"Could Ramel have been right?" he said to himself, "and I, only a
provincial, athirst for Parisine? But what matter? Let Mademoiselle
Kayser be what she will and I what I may be, it seems to me that I have
never loved any one as I love this woman."

"Not even Adrienne," added a faint, trembling voice from within. But
Sulpice had a ready answer to stifle it: Adrienne could not be compared
with any creature in the world. Adrienne was the charm, the daily
comfort of the domestic hearth. She was the wife, not the "woman." She
was the darling, not the love. Vaudrey would have severed one of his
arms to spare her any heavy sorrow, but he was not anxious about
Adrienne. She knew nothing, she would know nothing. And what fault,
moreover, had he committed hitherto? In that word _hitherto_, a host of
mental reservations were involved that Sulpice would gladly have
obliterated with his nails, he was ready to cry out with the same good
faith,--that of the husband who deceives the wife whom he loves:

"What wrong have I done?"

One afternoon,--there was no session of the Chamber that day,--Marianne
was seated in her little salon. She was warming the tips of her
slippers, that furtively peeped from beneath the lace of her skirt as a
little bird might protrude its beak from a nest, her right leg crossed
over the other, and she appeared to be musing, her chin resting on her
delicate hand.

She was weary. Justine, her recently engaged femme de chambre, who, like
the silverware, was provided by the Dujarrier, came to announce with the
discreet, bantering little smile of servants, that Monsieur Dachet, the
upholsterer, had called twice.

"The upholsterer!"

Marianne frowned slightly.

"What did he say?"

"Nothing, that he would return to-morrow."

"You call that nothing?" said Marianne, with a short laugh.

When Justine had left the room, she went straight to a small, black,
Italian cabinet inlaid with ivory, of which one drawer was locked. In
opening it, the sound of gold coins rattling on the wood caused her to
smile; then, with the tips of her white fingers, she spread out the
louis at the bottom of the drawer, which she abruptly closed, making a
wry face, and folding her arms, she returned to her seat in front of the
fire, beatin