or of Maud's letter left no doubt as to the nature of the
proofs she had in her hand, which she had there no doubt. How? He did not
ask himself that question, governed as he was by a phenomenon in which
was revealed to the full the singular complexity of his nature. The
Slav's especial characteristic is a prodigious, instantaneous
nervousness. It seems that those beings with the uncertain hearts have a
faculty of amplifying in themselves, to the point of absorbing the heart
altogether, states of partial, passing, and yet sincere emotion. The
intensity of their momentary excitement thus makes of them sincere
comedians, who speak to you as if they felt certain sentiments of an
exclusive order, to feel contradictory ones the day after, with the same
ardor, with the same untruthfulness, unjustly say the victims of those
natures, so much the more deceitful as they are more vibrating.

He suffered, indeed, on discovering that Maud had been initiated into his
criminal intrigue, but he suffered more for her than for himself. It was
sufficient for that suffering to occupy a few moments, a few hours. It
reinvested the personality of the impassioned and weak husband who loved
his wife while betraying her. There was, indeed, a shade of it in his
adventure, but a very slight shade. And yet, he did not think he was
telling an untruth, when he finally broke the silence to say to her whom
he had so long deceived:

"You have avenged yourself with much severity, Maud, but you had the
right.... I do not know who has informed you of an error which was very
culpable, very wrong, very unfortunate, too.... I know that I have in
Rome enemies bent upon my ruin, and I am sure they have left me no means
of defending myself. I have deceived you, and I have suffered."

He paused after those words, uttered with a tremor of conviction which
was not assumed. He had forgotten that ten minutes before he had entered
the room with the firm determination to hide his duel and its cause from
the woman for whose pardon he would at that moment have sacrificed his
life without hesitation. He continued, in a voice softened by affection:
"Whatever they have told you, whatever you have read, I swear to you, you
do not know all."

"I know enough," interrupted Maud, "since I know that you have been the
lover of that woman, of the mother of my intimate friend, at my side,
under my very eyes.... If you had suffered by that deception, as you say,
you would not have