e fear of the secret being revealed.
Come, is it not true?" he continued. "How many are there who would yield
to a sudden desire, the caprice of an hour, a passing fancy, did they
not fear to pay for a short-lived and fleeting pleasure by an
irremediable scandal and painful tears?"

He spoke with catching conviction, as though pleading a cause, his own
cause, as though he had said: "It is not with me that one would have to
dread such dangers. Try me and see."

They both looked at him approvingly, holding that he spoke rightly and
justly, confessing by their friendly silence that their flexible
morality as Parisians would not have held out long before the certainty
of secrecy. And Forestier, leaning back in his place on the divan, one
leg bent under him, and his napkin thrust into his waistcoat, suddenly
said with the satisfied laugh of a skeptic: "The deuce! yes, they would
all go in for it if they were certain of silence. Poor husbands!"

And they began to talk of love. Without admitting it to be eternal,
Duroy understood it as lasting, creating a bond, a tender friendship, a
confidence. The union of the senses was only a seal to the union of
hearts. But he was angry at the outrageous jealousies, melodramatic
scenes, and unpleasantness which almost always accompany ruptures.

When he ceased speaking, Madame de Marelle replied: "Yes, it is the only
pleasant thing in life, and we often spoil it by preposterous
unreasonableness."

Madame Forestier, who was toying with her knife, added: "Yes--yes--it is
pleasant to be loved."

And she seemed to be carrying her dream further, to be thinking things
that she dared not give words to.

As the first _entree_ was slow in coming, they sipped from time to time
a mouthful of champagne, and nibbled bits of crust. And the idea of
love, entering into them, slowly intoxicated their souls, as the bright
wine, rolling drop by drop down their throats, fired their blood and
perturbed their minds.

The waiter brought in some lamb cutlets, delicate and tender, upon a
thick bed of asparagus tips.

"Ah! this is good," exclaimed Forestier; and they ate slowly, savoring
the delicate meat and vegetables as smooth as cream.

Duroy resumed: "For my part, when I love a woman everything else in the
world disappears." He said this in a tone of conviction.

Madame Forestier murmured, with her let-me-alone air:

"There is no happiness comparable to that of the first hand-clasp, when
the on