e de Rosas the good-natured
girl that I have been toward you, and you are quite capable of it, for
you are a sentimental fellow, then it will be useless to even appear to
have ever known each other. I am turning the key on my life. _Crac!
Bonsoir_, Sulpice!"

The unhappy man! He had cherished the thought of still visiting his
mistress, but he found there an unlooked-for being, a new creature, who
was unmistakably determined, in spite of her cunning charm, and she
spoke to him in stupefying, ironical language.

"You would have me go mad, Marianne?"

"Why! what an idea! The phrase is decidedly romantic.--You should
dispense with the blue in love as well as the exaggeration in politics."

"Marianne," Vaudrey said abruptly, "do you know that for your sake I
have destroyed my home and mortally wounded my wife?"

"Well," she replied, "did I ask you to do so? I pleased you, you pleased
me; that was quite enough. I desire no one's death and if you have
allowed everything to be known, it is because you have acted
indiscreetly or stupidly! But I who do not wish to mortally wound," she
emphasized these words with a smile--"my husband, I expect him to
suspect nothing, know nothing, and as you are incapable of possessing
enough intelligence not to play Antony with him, let us stop here.
Adieu, then, my dear Vaudrey!"

She extended her hand to him, that soft hand that imparted an electrical
influence when he touched it.

"Well, what!--You are pouting?"

"I love you," he replied distractedly. "I love you, you hear, and I wish
to keep you!"

"Ah! no, no! no roughness," she said with a laugh, as he, taking a seat
near her, tried to draw her to him in his arms.

"To keep you, although belonging to another," whispered Vaudrey slowly.

"For whom do you take me?" said Marianne, proudly drawing herself up.
"If I have a husband, I require that he be respected. A man who gives
his name to a woman is clearly entitled to be dealt with truthfully!"

"Then," stammered Sulpice, "what?--Must we never see each other again?"

"We shall recognize each other."

"You drive me away?"

"As a lover!"

"Ah! stay," said Vaudrey, as, pale with anger, he walked across the
room, "you are a miserable woman, a courtesan, you understand, a
courtesan!--Guy has told me everything! You gave yourself to Jouvenet to
avenge yourself on Lissac, you made a tool of me and you are making a
sport of Rosas who is marrying you!--What have I not done for you!