loyed in making the
best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom
she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery
became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but,
fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme hope;
she found a refuge in the belief in a future life, a wonderful thought
which enabled her to take up her painful task afresh. No elation of
victory followed those terrible inward battles and throes of anguish;
no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her haggard glances met
no response from human eyes, and during the brief moments snatched by
chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded and in solitude.

One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts
and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a remark
so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon subsequent
reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife not seldom
suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the depths of the
abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was feeling glad to have
been left to herself for some days, when the real reason of her solitude
flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle and tired of her, or
generous and full of pity for her, was hers no longer.

In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices, all
that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a mother.
Looking forward, she thought of her daughter's fortune, of the future
welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of happiness came
to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound her to life.

Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a stepmother's terrible
thraldom, which might crush her darling's life. Upon this new vision of
threatened possibilities followed one of those paroxysms of thought at
fever-heat which consume whole years of life.

Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be separated by a whole
world of thought, and all the weight of that world she must bear alone.
Hitherto she had felt sure that Victor loved her, in so far as he could
be said to love; sh