ed very nice, really very nice, my dear,
far better than my husband or than yours, I mean than your late husband,
as you have got a divorce. Now you can choose.

"I said to myself! If I give them the sign, will they understand me, who
am a respectable woman? And I was seized with a mad longing to make that
sign to them. I had a longing, the longing of a pregnant woman ... a
terrible longing; you know, one of those longings which one cannot
resist! I have some like that occasionally. How stupid such things are,
don't you think so? I believe that we woman have the souls of monkeys. I
have been told (and it was a physician who told me) that the brain of a
monkey was very like ours. Of course we must imitate some one or other.
We imitate our husbands, when we love them, during the first months
after our marriage, and then our lovers, our female friends, our
confessors, when they are nice. We assume their ways of thought, their
manners of speech, their words, their gestures, everything. It is very
stupid.

"However, as for me, when I am too much tempted to do a thing I always
do it, and so I said to myself: 'I will try it once, on one man only,
just to see. What can happen to me? Nothing whatever! We shall exchange
a smile and that will be all, and I shall deny it, most certainly.'

"So I began to make my choice. I wanted someone nice, very nice, and
suddenly I saw a tall, fair, very good-looking fellow coming along. I
like fair men, as you know. I looked at him, he looked at me; I smiled,
he smiled; I made the movement; oh! but scarcely; he replied _yes_ with
his head, and there he was, my dear! He came in at the large door of the
house.

"You cannot imagine what passed through my mind then! I thought I should
go mad. Oh! how frightened I was. Just think, he will speak to the
servants! To Joseph, who is devoted to my husband! Joseph would
certainly think that I had known that gentleman for a long time.

"What could I do, just tell me? And he would ring in a moment. What
could I do, tell me? I thought I would go and meet him, and tell him he
had made a mistake, and beg him to go away. He would have pity on a
woman, on a poor woman: So I rushed to the door and opened it, just at
the moment when he was going to ring the bell, and I stammered out,
quite stupidly: 'Go away, Monsieur, go away; you have made a mistake, a
terrible mistake; I took you for one of my friends whom you are very
like. Have pity on me, Monsieur.'