the thought. It was impossible.

Vaudrey felt his head turn under the humiliation of his double defeat,
the loss of parliamentary confidence, and Marianne's insulting laugh,
and urged by the anxiety he felt about the obligation to be met in eight
days, in his bewilderment he thought of writing to Gochard of Rue des
Marais, to ask for time. This Gochard must be a half-usurer. Certain of
being paid, some day, he would perhaps be delighted to renew the bill of
exchange in inordinately swelling the amount. The letter was written and
Vaudrey mailed it himself the following morning.

That very evening Adrienne was to leave. He endeavored to dissuade her
from her plan. She did not even reply to him. She stood looking at a
crystal vase on the chimney-piece in which were some winter roses,
Christmas roses, fresh and milk-white, that had been sent as a souvenir
from yonder Dauphiny. Her glance rested fixedly on that fair bouquet
that seemed like a bursting cloud of whiteness.

"Then," said Vaudrey, "it is settled--quite settled--you are going?"

"I am."

"In three hours?"

"In three hours!"

"I know where those roses were gathered," said Sulpice tenderly. "It was
at the foot of the window where we leaned elbow to elbow and dreamed."

"Yes," Adrienne answered, in a broken voice whose sound was like that
which might have been given out by the vase had it been struck and
shattered. "We had lovely dreams! The reality has indeed belied them!"

"Adrienne!" he murmured.

She made no reply.

He tried to approach her, feeling ashamed as he thought that he had
similarly wished to approach Marianne.

She instinctively drew back.

"You remember," she said coldly, "that one day when we were speaking
about divorce, I told you that there was a very simple way of divorce?
It was never to see each other again, never, to be nothing more to each
other from the day on which confidence should die?--You have deceived
me, it is done. I am a stranger to you! If I were a mother, I should
have duties to fulfil. I would not have failed therein. I would have
endured everything for a son!--Nothing is left to me. I have not even
the joy of caressing a child that would have consoled me. I am your
widow while you yet live. Well, be it so. You have willed it, there,
then, is divorce!"

For the third time since Adrienne had learned everything, he tried to
stammer the word _pardon_. He felt it was useless. This sensitive being
had withdrawn withi