rmination and
firmness such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into
her room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her
writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.

"What do you want?" she cried.

"Your lover's letters," he said.

"They're not here," she said, shutting the drawer; but from that
action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her
hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used
to put her most important papers. She tried to pull the
portfolio away, but he pushed her back.

"Sit down! I have to speak to you," he said, putting the
portfolio under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his
elbow that his shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she
gazed at him in silence.

"I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in
this house."

"I had to see him to..."

She stopped, not finding a reason.

"I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her
lover."

"I meant, I only..." she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness
of his angered her, and gave her courage. "Surely you must feel
how easy it is for you to insult me?" she said.

"An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a
thief he's a thief is simply _la constatation d'un fait_."

"This cruelty is something new I did not know in you."

"You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty,
giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the
condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?"

"It's worse than cruel--it's base, if you want to know!" Anna
cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.

"No!" he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note
higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the
arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he
was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.

"Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake
husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband's
bread!"

She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the
evening before to her lover, that _he_ was her husband, and her
husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt
all the justice of his words, and only said softly:

"You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be
myself; but what are you saying all this for?"

"What am I saying it for? what for?" he went on, as angrily.
"Th