ere aware that I was there--in that room. But if you only knew--ah,
if you only knew!"

Her lips were quivering, and tears were welling into her eyes. As he
looked at her he was surprised by the extraordinary beauty transfiguring
her face. This woman, invariably clad in black, extremely simple, with
never a jewel, now appeared to him in all the brilliancy of her passion;
no longer drawing back into the gloom, no longer seeking to bedim the
lustre of her eyes, as was her wont. She, who at first sight did not seem
pretty, but too dark and slender, with drawn features, a large mouth and
long nose, assumed, as he now examined her, a troubling charm, a
powerful, irresistible beauty. Her eyes especially--her large,
magnificent eyes, whose brasiers she usually sought to cover with a veil
of indifference--were flaring like torches; and he understood that she
should be loved, adored, to madness.

"If you only knew, Monsieur l'Abbe," she continued. "If I were only to
tell you all that I have suffered. Doubtless you have suspected something
of it, since you are acquainted with my mother-in-law and my husband. On
the few occasions when you have called on us you cannot but have
understood some of the abominable things which go on in my home, though I
have always striven to appear happy in my silent little corner. But to
live like that for ten years, to have no existence--never to love, never
to be loved--no, no, it was beyond my power!"

And then she related the whole painful story: her marriage with the
diamond merchant, a disastrous, though it seemed an advantageous one; her
mother-in-law, with the stern soul of a jailer or an executioner, and her
husband, a monster of physical ugliness and mental villainy. They
imprisoned her, they did not even allow her to look out of a window. They
had beaten her, they had pitilessly assailed her in her tastes, her
inclinations, in all her feminine weaknesses. She knew that her husband
wandered in his affections, and yet if she smiled to a relative, if she
had a flower in her corsage on some rare day of gaiety, he would tear it
from her, enter into the most jealous rage, and seize and bruise her
wrists whilst shouting the most fearful threats. For years and years she
had lived in that hell, hoping, hoping still, having within her such a
power of life, such an ardent need of affection, that she continued
waiting for happiness, ever thinking, at the faintest breath, that it was
about to enter.