eace, pray; I am not even at liberty to have
my carriage to myself, now." He, however, pretended not to hear her, and
continued: "You have never looked so pretty as you do to-day."

Her patience was decidedly at an end, and she replied with irrepressible
anger: "You are wrong to notice it, for I swear to you, that I will
never have anything to do with you in that way again." He was decidedly
stupefied and agitated, and his violent nature gaining the upper hand,
he exclaimed: "What do you mean by that?" in such a manner as revealed
rather the brutal master, than the amorous man. But she replied in a
low voice, so that the servants might not hear amidst the deafening
noise of the wheels: "Ah! What do I mean by that? What do I mean by
that? Now I recognize you again! Do you want me to tell everything?"
"Yes." "Everything that has been on my heart, since I have been the
victim of your terrible selfishness?"

He had grown red with surprise and anger, and he growled between his
closed teeth: "Yes, tell me everything."

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a big, red beard, a handsome
man, a nobleman, a man of the world, who passed as a perfect husband and
an excellent father, and now for the first time since they had started
she turned towards him, and looked him full in the face: "Ah! You will
hear some disagreeable things, but you must know that I am prepared for
everything, that I fear nothing, and you less than anyone, to-day."

He also was looking into her eyes, and already he was shaking with
passion, and he said in a low voice: "You are mad." "No, but I will no
longer be the victim of the hateful penalty of maternity, which you have
inflicted on me for eleven years! I wish to live like a woman of the
world, as I have a right to do, as all women have the right to do."

He suddenly grew pale again, and stammered: "I do not understand you."
"Oh! yes; you understand me well enough. It is now three months since I
had my last child, and as I am still very beautiful, and as, in spite of
all your efforts you cannot spoil my figure, as you just now perceived,
when you saw me on the outside flight of steps, you think it is time
that I should become pregnant again." "But you are talking nonsense!"
"No, I am not. I am thirty, and I have had seven children, and we have
been married eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for ten
years longer, after which you will leave off being jealous."

He seized her arm and sq