f at her feet.

Entering the garden, I saw that her room was lighted and a flash of
suspicion crossed my mind. "She does not expect me at this hour," I said
to myself; "who knows what she may be doing. I left her in tears
yesterday; I may find her ready to sing to-day and caring no more for me
than if I never existed. I must enter gently, in order to surprise her."

I advanced on tiptoe, and the door being open, I could see Brigitte
without being seen.

She was seated at her table and was writing in that same book that had
aroused my suspicions. She held in her left hand a little box of white
wood which she looked at from time to time and trembled. There was
something sinister in the quiet that reigned in the room. Her secretary
was open and several bundles of papers were carefully ranged in order.

I made some noise at the door. She rose, went to the secretary, closed
it, then came to me with a smile:

"Octave," she said, "we are two children. If you had not come here, I
should have gone to you. Pardon me, I was wrong. Madame Daniel comes to
dinner to-morrow; make me repent, if you choose, of what you call my
despotism. If you but love me I am happy; let us forget what is past and
let us not spoil our happiness."

CHAPTER III

EXPLANATIONS

But quarrel had been, so to speak, less sad than our reconciliation; it
was attended, on Brigitte's part, by a mystery which frightened me at
first and then planted in my soul the seeds of constant dread.

There developed in me, in spite of my struggles, the two elements of
misfortune which the past had bequeathed me: at times furious jealousy
attended by reproaches and insults; at other times a cruel gayety, an
affected cheerfulness, that mockingly outraged whatever I held most dear.
Thus the inexorable spectres of the past pursued me without respite; thus
Brigitte, seeing herself treated alternately as a faithless mistress and
a shameless woman, fell into a condition of melancholy that clouded our
entire life; and worst of all, that sadness even, the cause of which I
knew, was not the most burdensome of our sorrows. I was young and I loved
pleasure; that daily association with a woman older than I, who suffered
and languished, that face, more and more serious, which was always before
me, all this repelled my youth and aroused within me bitter regrets for
the liberty I had lost.

One night we were passing through the forest in the beautiful light of
the moon, and