aken. Then he really began
to admire her with an admiration that his friendship for the husband
obliged him to keep within the bounds of discretion, making him timid
and embarrassed. Madame Souris believing that his presumptions had
received a wholesome check now treated him as a good friend. This went
on for nine years.

One morning a messenger brought Leuillet a distracted note from the poor
woman. Souris had just died suddenly from the rupture of an aneurism.
He was dreadfully shocked, for they were just the same age. But
almost immediately a feeling of profound joy, of intense relief, of
emancipation filled his being. Madame Souris was free.

He managed, however, to assume the sad, sympathetic expression that was
appropriate, waited the required time, observed all social appearances.
At the end of fifteen months he married the widow.

This was considered to be a very natural, and even a generous action. It
was the act of a good friend of an upright man.

He was happy at last, perfectly happy.

They lived in the most cordial intimacy, having understood and
appreciated each other from the first. They had no secrets from one
another and even confided to each other their most secret thoughts.
Leuillet loved his wife now with a quiet and trustful affection;
he loved her as a tender, devoted companion who is an equal and a
confidante. But there lingered in his mind a strange and inexplicable
bitterness towards the defunct Souris, who had first been the husband of
this woman, who had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and had
even robbed her of some of her poetry. The memory of the dead husband
marred the happiness of the living husband, and this posthumous jealousy
tormented his heart by day and by night.

The consequence was he talked incessantly of Souris, asked about a
thousand personal and secret minutia, wanted to know all about his
habits and his person. And he sneered at him even in his grave,
recalling with self-satisfaction his whims, ridiculing his absurdities,
dwelling on his faults.

He would call to his wife all over the house:

"Hallo, Mathilde!"

"Here I am, dear."

"Come here a moment."

She would come, always smiling, knowing well that he would say something
about Souris and ready to flatter her new husband's inoffensive mania.

"Tell me, do you remember one day how Souris insisted on explaining to
me that little men always commanded more affection than big men?"

And he made so