and I married him, which pleased my aunt very much indeed. When I was his wife in the eyes of the Church and of God, I loved him still more. I loved him far too much, of course. Was I wrong, was I right? Who can tell? I was happy in that love, and I was wrong not to realize that it might be disturbed. Did I know him well before marrying him? Of course not; but it seems to me that one can no more accuse a nice girl who wants to get married for making an unwise choice than an abandoned woman for taking a cad for a lover. Both of us—wretched creatures that we are—are equally ignorant. What these unfortunate victims called marriageable girls need is a shameful education—I mean the knowledge of men’s vices. I should like each one of those poor little things, before assuming the marriage tie, to hear in some secret place, without being seen, two men talking together about the things of life and especially about women. After that first and formidable test they could abandon themselves with less danger to the terrible hazard of marriage, knowing the strength and weakness of their future tyrants.’

Samuel did not exactly see what this charming victim was driving at, but he began to find that she was talking too much about her husband for a disillusioned woman.

After a pause of a few moments as if she feared to approach the fatal spot, she resumed thus:

‘One day M. de Cosmelly wanted to return to Paris; it was necessary that I should shine in my own light and be in a setting worthy of my merit. A beautiful and clever woman, he said, owes herself to Paris. She must know how to pose before society, and shed some of her reflected light on her husband. A woman of noble mind and good sense knows that she has no glory to expect in the world save in so far as she shares the glory of her travelling companion, serves the virtues of her husband, and above all, that she obtains respect only in so far as she makes him respected. Of course, it was the simplest, surest way of getting himself obeyed almost joyously. To know that my efforts and my obedience would make me more beautiful in his eyes: it did not require even as much as that to decide me to face this terrible Paris, of which I was instinctively afraid, and the black, dazzling ghost of which, looming on the horizon of my dreams, sent a shudder through my poor girlish heart. That then, according to him, was the real reason for our journey. A husband’s vanity constitutes the virtue of a loving wife. Perhaps he was lying to himself in a sort of well-meaning way, and cheating his conscience without being aware of it. In Paris we had days reserved for close friends of whom, in the long run, M. de Cosmelly got bored as he had got bored with his wife. Perhaps he had got a little disgusted with her because she was too loving; she kept none of her love back. He got disgusted with his friends for the opposite reason. They had nothing to offer him save the monotonous pleasures of conversations where passion has no share. Henceforth, his activity took another direction. After his friends came horses and cards. The hum and stir of society, the sight of those who had remained unfettered, and who gave endless accounts of the memories of a mad, busy youth, snatched him from his fireside and our long intimate talks. He who had never had any business but his heart, became a busy man. Rich and without profession, he managed to create a crowd of bustling, frivolous occupations which filled all his time. “Where are you going?” “At what time shall I see you again?” “Come back quickly”—these wifely questions I had to thrust back again down into the depths of my heart: for English life—that death of love—the life of clubs and meetings absorbed him completely. The exclusive care he took of his person, and the dandyism he affected, shocked me to begin with; obviously I was not the object of it. I tried to be like him, to be more than beautiful, that is to say to be coquettish, attractive for him as he was for everybody; where formerly I used to offer everything and give everything, now I wanted to be pleaded with. I wanted to rekindle the ashes of my dead happiness by shaking and stirring them; but apparently I am not very clever at deception, and very awkward at vice. He did not even condescend to notice it. My aunt, cruel like all old and envious women, who are reduced to admiring a show in which they were formerly actresses, took great care to let me know, through the interested medium of a cousin of M. de Cosmelly’s, that he had fallen in love with an actress who was then the rage. I made them take me to all the plays, and, at the appearance on the stage of every good-looking woman I trembled lest I was admiring my rival. Finally, by the charity of the same cousin, I learned that it was Fanfarlo, an actress as stupid as she was beautiful. You who are an author, you know her of course. I am not very vain or proud of my looks, but I swear to you, M. Cramer, that many a time at night, about three or four in the morning, tired of waiting for my husband, my eyes red with tears and lack of sleep, after long and beseeching prayers for his return to fidelity