netrating charm.

George murmured, "Dear little Made," as he pressed her to him.

"Do you remember the forest close to your home, how gloomy it was?" said
she. "It seemed to me that it was full of horrible creatures, and that
there was no end to it, while here it is delightful. One feels caresses
in the breeze, and I know that Sevres lies on the other side of the
wood."

He replied, "Oh! in the forest at home there was nothing but deer,
foxes, and wild boars, and here and there the hut of a forester."

This word, akin to the dead man's name, issuing from his mouth,
surprised him just as if some one had shouted it out to him from the
depths of a thicket, and he became suddenly silent, assailed anew by
the strange and persistent uneasiness, and gnawing, invincible, jealous
irritation that had been spoiling his existence for some time past.
After a minute or so, he asked: "Did you ever come here like this of an
evening with Charles?"

"Yes, often," she answered.

And all of a sudden he was seized with a wish to return home, a nervous
desire that gripped him at the heart. But the image of Forestier had
returned to his mind and possessed and laid hold of him. He could no
longer speak or think of anything else and said in a spiteful tone, "I
say, Made?"

"Yes, dear."

"Did you ever cuckold poor Charles?"

She murmured disdainfully, "How stupid you are with your stock joke."

But he would not abandon the idea.

"Come, Made, dear, be frank and acknowledge it. You cuckolded him, eh?
Come, admit that you cuckolded him?"

She was silent, shocked as all women are by this expression.

He went on obstinately, "Hang it all, if ever anyone had the head for a
cuckold it was he. Oh! yes. It would please me to know that he was one.
What a fine head for horns." He felt that she was smiling at some
recollection, perhaps, and persisted, saying, "Come out with it. What
does it matter? It would be very comical to admit that you had deceived
him, to me."

He was indeed quivering with hope and desire that Charles, the hateful
Charles, the detested dead, had borne this shameful ridicule. And
yet--yet--another emotion, less definite. "My dear little Made, tell me,
I beg of you. He deserved it. You would have been wrong not to have
given him a pair of horns. Come, Made, confess."

She now, no doubt, found this persistence amusing, for she was laughing
a series of short, jerky laughs.

He had put his lips close to his wife's ear