er letters, her last letters
must be here, in one of those pieces of furniture whose drawers she
might open with her nails. She threw her gloves on the floor and
mechanically tore into shreds--as she always did when in a rage--between
her nervous fingers, her fine cambric handkerchief reduced to rags.

"Be very careful what you are doing, Guy," she said at last, casting a
malicious look at him, "I have purchased these letters from you, for I
hate you, I repeat it, and these letters you owe to me as you would owe
money promised to a wench. If you do not give them to me, I will have
them, notwithstanding."

"Really?"

"I promise you I will."

"And suppose I have burned them?"

"You lie, you have them here, you have kept them. You have behaved
toward me like a thief."

"Nonsense, Marianne," said Lissac coldly, "on my faith, I see I have
done well to preserve some weapon against you. You are certainly very
dangerous!"

"More than you imagine," she replied.

He moved slightly backward, seeing that she wished to pass him to reach
the door.

"You will not give me back my letters?" she asked in a harsh and
menacing tone as she stood on the threshold of the room.

Guy stooped without heeding her and picked up the gloves that were lying
on the carpet and handed them to the young woman:

"This is your property, I think?"

This was said with insolently refined politeness.

Marianne took the gloves, and as a last insult, like a blow on the
cheek, she threw them at Guy's face, who turned aside and the gloves
fell on the bed where just before these two hatreds had come together in
kisses of passion.

"Miserable coward!" said Marianne, surveying Lissac from head to foot
with an expression of scorn, while he stood still, his monocle dangling
at the end of a fine cord on his breast, near the buttonhole of his
jacket that bore the red rosette; his face was pale but wore a sly
expression.

That silk rosette looked there like a vermilion note stamped on a dark
ground, and it seemed to pierce like a luminous drill into Marianne's
eyes; and with her head erect, pallid face and trembling lip she passed
before the domestic who hastened to open the door and went downstairs,
repeating to herself with all the distracted fury of a fixed idea:

"To be avenged! To be avenged! Oh! to be avenged!"

She jumped into a cab.

"Well?"--said the coachman, looking with blinking eyes at this
pale-faced, distraught-looking woman.

She