to orgies with other women, that she led
the crapulous existence of the most abject, the most contemptible of
mortals--would be an insane wandering of the mind, for the realisation
of which, thank heaven, the chrysanthemums that he could imagine, the
daily cups of tea, the virtuous indignation left neither time nor
place. Only, now and again, he gave Odette to understand that people
maliciously kept him informed of everything that she did; and making
opportune use of some detail--insignificant but true--which he had
accidentally learned, as though it were the sole fragment which he would
allow, in spite of himself, to pass his lips, out of the numberless
other fragments of that complete reconstruction of her daily life which
he carried secretly in his mind, he led her to suppose that he was
perfectly informed upon matters, which, in reality, he neither knew nor
suspected, for if he often adjured Odette never to swerve from or make
alteration of the truth, that was only, whether he realised it or no, in
order that Odette should tell him everything that she did. No doubt, as
he used to assure Odette, he loved sincerity, but only as he might
love a pander who could keep him in touch with the daily life of his
mistress. Moreover, his love of sincerity, not being disinterested, had
not improved his character. The truth which he cherished was that which
Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order to extract that truth
from her, was not afraid to have recourse to falsehood, that very
falsehood which he never ceased to depict to Odette as leading every
human creature down to utter degradation. In a word, he lied as much
as did Odette, because, while more unhappy than she, he was no less
egotistical. And she, when she heard him repeating thus to her the
things that she had done, would stare at him with a look of distrust
and, at all hazards, of indignation, so as not to appear to be
humiliated, and to be blushing for her actions. One day, after the
longest period of calm through which he had yet been able to exist
without being overtaken by an attack of jealousy, he had accepted an
invitation to spend the evening at the theatre with the Princesse des
Laumes. Having opened his newspaper to find out what was being
played, the sight of the title--_Les Filles de Marbre_, by Theodore
Barriere,--struck him so cruel a blow that he recoiled instinctively
from it and turned his head away. Illuminated, as though by a row of
footlights