shed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of
reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove,
the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three
unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she
tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced
them to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of
shreds, which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were
employed in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures
at her hands; and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy
she had called her love. By a strange association of ideas, the famous
composition, so praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she
cried:

"Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!"

"If I remember, I shall be more unhappy. All has been a dream. His
look was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day,
all--all--were dreams. He was making a fool of me when he gave me that
pink which is now in this pile of ashes. He was laughing when he told me
I was more beautiful than was natural. Never have I been--never shall I
be in his eyes--more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll."

And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the
careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the
artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder and
lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had
set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been
annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart.
But the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance at the
adornments of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original--all blue
and pink, with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers. She
seemed to say to them all: "Keep my secret. It is a sad one. Be careful:
keep it safely." The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest on a
velvet stand, the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed,
with rosaries and palms entwined about it, the photographs of her
girl-friends standing on her writing table in pretty frames of
old-fashioned silk-all seemed to see her depart with a look of sympathy.

She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not
submit to punishment. The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she
thought, to affect