great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she
could, some gayety. But the task before her was more difficult than she
had expected. Apparently, as a proof of reconciliation, Marien had been
kept to dinner. To see him so soon again after his words of outrage was
more than she could bear. For one moment the earth seemed to sink under
her feet; she roused her pride by an heroic effort, and that sustained
her. She exchanged with the artist, as she always did, a friendly
"Good-evening!" and ate her dinner, though it nearly choked her.

Madame de Nailles had red eyes; and Jacqueline made the reflection that
women who are thirty-five should never weep. She knew that her face
had not been made ugly by her tears, and this gave her a perverse
satisfaction in the midst of her misery. Of Marien she thought: "He
sits there as if he had been put 'en penitence'." No doubt he could not
endure scenes, and the one he had just passed through must have given
him the downcast look which Jacqueline noticed with contempt.

What she did not know was that his depression had more than one cause.
He felt--and felt with shame and with discouragement--that the fetters
of a connection which had long since ceased to charm had been fastened
on his wrists tighter than ever; and he thought: "I shall lose all my
energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall
see ever before me--ah! tortures of Tantalus!--the vision of a new love,
fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight,
which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see
it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is
not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or
deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can I flatter myself
that I have acted like an honest man?"

This is what Marien was really thinking, while Jacqueline looked at
him with an expression she strove to make indifferent, but which he
interpreted, though she knew it not: "You have done me all the harm you
can."

M. de Nailles meantime went on talking, with little response from his
wife or his guest, about some vehement discussion of a new law going
on just then in the Chamber, and he became so interested in his own
discourse that he did not remark the constraint of the others.

Marien at last, tired of responding in monosyllables to his remarks,
said abruptly, a short time before dessert was placed upon the ta