t is the matter?" I said to her in a low voice.

She pressed my hand without a word, for tears still veiled her voice.
But after a few minutes, recovering herself a little, she said to me:

"You have been very unkind to me, Armand, and I have done nothing to
you."

"Nothing?" I answered, with a bitter smile.

"Nothing but what circumstances forced me to do."

I do not know if you have ever in your life experienced, or if you will
ever experience, what I felt at the sight of Marguerite.

The last time she had come to see me she had sat in the same place where
she was now sitting; only, since then, she had been the mistress of
another man, other kisses than mine had touched her lips, toward which,
in spite of myself, my own reached out, and yet I felt that I loved this
woman as much, more perhaps, than I had ever loved her.

It was difficult for me to begin the conversation on the subject which
brought her. Marguerite no doubt realized it, for she went on:

"I have come to trouble you, Armand, for I have two things to ask:
pardon for what I said yesterday to Mlle. Olympe, and pity for what you
are perhaps still ready to do to me. Intentionally or not, since your
return you have given me so much pain that I should be incapable now of
enduring a fourth part of what I have endured till now. You will have
pity on me, won't you? And you will understand that a man who is not
heartless has other nobler things to do than to take his revenge upon a
sick and sad woman like me. See, take my hand. I am in a fever. I left
my bed to come to you, and ask, not for your friendship, but for your
indifference."

I took Marguerite's hand. It was burning, and the poor woman shivered
under her fur cloak.

I rolled the arm-chair in which she was sitting up to the fire.

"Do you think, then, that I did not suffer," said I, "on that night
when, after waiting for you in the country, I came to look for you in
Paris, and found nothing but the letter which nearly drove me mad? How
could you have deceived me, Marguerite, when I loved you so much?

"Do not speak of that, Armand; I did not come to speak of that. I wanted
to see you only not an enemy, and I wanted to take your hand once more.
You have a mistress; she is young, pretty, you love her they say. Be
happy with her and forget me."

"And you. You are happy, no doubt?"

"Have I the face of a happy woman, Armand? Do not mock my sorrow, you,
who know better than any one what its cau