Marillac, who had been drinking tea ever since rising, dared not present
his face, which showed the effects of his debauch of the night before, to
the mistress of the house, whose exacting and aristocratic austerity he
very much feared. He pretended to be ill, in order to delay the moment
when he should be forced to make his appearance. Madame de Bergenheim did
not leave her aunt, and thus avoided being alone with Octave--who, on
account of these different complications, might have spent a continual
tete-a-tete with her had she been so inclined. Christian's absence,
instead of being a signal of deliverance for the lovers, seemed to have
created a new misunderstanding, for Clemence felt that it would be a mean
action to abuse the liberty her husband's departure gave her. She was
thus very reserved during the day, when she felt that there were more
facilities for yielding, but, in the evening, when alone in her
apartment, this fictitious prudery disappeared. She spent the entire
evening lying upon the divan in the little boudoir, dreaming of Octave,
talking to him as if he could reply, putting into practice again that
capitulation of conscience which permits our mind to wander on the brink
of guilt, provided actions are strictly correct.

After a while this exaltation fell by degrees. When struggling earnestly,
she had regarded Octave as an enemy; but, since she had gone to him as
one passes over to the enemy, and, in her heart, had taken part with the
lover against the husband, her courage failed her as she thought of this,
and she fell, weak, guilty, and vanquished before the combat.

When she had played with her passion, she had given Christian little
thought; she had felt it childish to bring her husband into an amusement
that she believed perfectly harmless; then, when she wished to break her
plaything, and found it made of iron and turning more and more into a
tyrannical yoke, she called to her aid the conjugal divinities, but in
too faint a voice to be heard. Now the situation had changed again.
Christian was no longer the insignificant ally that the virtuous wife had
condemned, through self-conceit, to ignorant neutrality; he was the
husband, in the hostile and fearful acceptation of the word. This man
whom she had wronged would always have law on his side.

Religion sometimes takes pity on a wayward wife, but society is always
ready to condemn her. She was his own, fastened to him by indissoluble
bonds. He had