Madame Arnoux, as he was too much in love with
another woman.

"Why, with you, my beautiful one!"

"Ah! don't laugh at me! You only annoy me!"

He thought it a prudent course to invent a story--to pretend that he was
swayed by a passion. He manufactured some circumstantial details. This
woman, however, had rendered him very unhappy.

"Decidedly, you have not been lucky," said Rosanette.

"Oh! oh! I may have been!" wishing to convey in this way that he had
been often fortunate in his love-affairs, so that she might have a
better opinion of him, just as Rosanette did not avow how many lovers
she had had, in order that he might have more respect for her--for there
will always be found in the midst of the most intimate confidences
restrictions, false shame, delicacy, and pity. You divine either in the
other or in yourself precipices or miry paths which prevent you from
penetrating any farther; moreover, you feel that you will not be
understood. It is hard to express accurately the thing you mean,
whatever it may be; and this is the reason why perfect unions are rare.

The poor Marechale had never known one better than this. Often, when she
gazed at Frederick, tears came into her eyes; then she would raise them
or cast a glance towards the horizon, as if she saw there some bright
dawn, perspectives of boundless felicity. At last, she confessed one day
to him that she wished to have a mass said, "so that it might bring a
blessing on our love."

How was it, then, that she had resisted him so long? She could not tell
herself. He repeated his question a great many times; and she replied,
as she clasped him in her arms:

"It was because I was afraid, my darling, of loving you too well!"

On Sunday morning, Frederick read, amongst the list of the wounded given
in a newspaper, the name of Dussardier. He uttered a cry, and showing
the paper to Rosanette, declared that he was going to start at once for
Paris.

"For what purpose?"

"In order to see him, to nurse him!"

"You are not going, I'm sure, to leave me by myself?"

"Come with me!"

"Ha! to poke my nose in a squabble of that sort? Oh, no, thanks!"

"However, I cannot----"

"Ta! ta! ta! as if they had need of nurses in the hospitals! And then,
what concern is he of yours any longer? Everyone for himself!"

He was roused to indignation by this egoism on her part, and he
reproached himself for not being in the capital with the others. Such
indifference to the