llusions is the most terrible. That man whom
society considered a complaisant husband, that woman who seemed so
indulgent a wife, suddenly find that they have committed a murder or
a suicide, to the great astonishment of the world which, even then,
hesitates to recognize in that access of folly the proof, the blow, more
formidable, more instantaneous in its ravages, than those of love-sudden
disillusion. When the disaster is not interrupted by acts of violence,
it causes an irreparable destruction of the youthfulness of the soul, it
is the idea instilled in us forever that all can betray, since we have
been betrayed in that manner. It is for years, for life, sometimes, that
powerlessness to be affected, to hope, to believe, which caused Maud
Gorka to remain, on that afternoon, leaning against the pedestal of a
column, watching the rain fall, instead of ascending to the Basilica,
where the confessional offers pardon for all sins and the remedy for all
sorrows. Alas! It was consolation simply to kneel there, and the poor
woman was only in the first stage of Calvary.

She watched the rain fall, and she found a savage comfort in the
formidable character of the storm, which seemed like a cataclysm of
nature, to such degree did the flash of the lightning and the roar of
the thunder mingle with the echoes of the vast palace beneath the lash
of the wind. Forms began to take shape in her mind, after the whirlwind
of blind suffering in which she felt herself borne away after the first
glance cast upon that fatal letter. Each word rose before her eyes, so
feverish that she closed them with pain. The last two years of her life,
those which had bound her to Countess Steno, returned to her thoughts,
illuminated by a brilliance which drew from her constantly these words,
uttered with a moan: How could he? She saw Venice and their sojourn in
the villa to which Boleslas had conducted her after the death of their
little girl, in order that there, in the restful atmosphere of the
lagoon, she might overcome the keen paroxysm of pain.

How very kind and delicate Madame Steno had been at that time; at least
how kind she had seemed, and how delicate likewise, comprehending her
grief and sympathizing with it.... Their superficial relations had
gradually ripened into friendship. Then, no doubt, the treason had
begun. The purloiner of love had introduced herself under cover of the
pity in which Maud had believed. Seeing the Countess so generous,