tmosphere now was stifling--heated by the
lights and heavy, as it were, with melancholy silence after all the
outbursts of the quarrelling--they looked at one another and let their
arms fall, quite heart-rent by the unfortunate issue of their dinner
party. Henrietta tried to laugh it off, however, murmuring:

'I warned you, I quite understood--'

But he interrupted her with a despairing gesture. What! was that, then,
the end of his long illusion, that dream of eternity which had made
him set happiness in a few friendships, formed in childhood, and shared
until extreme old age? Ah! what a wretched band, what a final rending,
what a terrible balance-sheet to weep over after that bankruptcy of the
human heart! And he grew astonished on thinking of the friends who had
fallen off by the roadside, of the great affections lost on the way,
of the others unceasingly changing around himself, in whom he found no
change. His poor Thursdays filled him with pity, so many memories were
in mourning, it was the slow death of all that one loves! Would his
wife and himself have to resign themselves to live as in a desert, to
cloister themselves in utter hatred of the world? Ought they rather to
throw their doors wide open to a throng of strangers and indifferent
folk? By degrees a certainty dawned in the depths of his grief:
everything ended and nothing began again in life. He seemed to yield to
evidence, and, heaving a big sigh, exclaimed:

'You were right. We won't invite them to dinner again--they would devour
one another.'

As soon as Claude and Christine reached the Place de la Trinite on their
way home, the painter let go of his wife's arm; and, stammering that
he had to go somewhere, he begged her to return to the Rue Tourlaque
without him. She had felt him shuddering, and she remained quite scared
with surprise and fear. Somewhere to go at that hour--past midnight!
Where had he to go, and what for? He had turned round and was making
off, when she overtook him, and, pretending that she was frightened,
begged that he would not leave her to climb up to Montmartre alone at
that time of night. This consideration alone brought him back. He took
her arm again; they ascended the Rue Blanche and the Rue Lepic, and at
last found themselves in the Rue Tourlaque. And on reaching their door,
he rang the bell, and then again left her.

'Here you are,' he said; 'I'm going.'

He was already hastening away, taking long strides, and gesticula