hat."

They were close together; he, tall, dark, with long whiskers, and the
rather vulgar manners of a good-looking man, who is very well satisfied
with himself; she, small, fair and pink, a little Parisian, half
shopkeeper, half one of those of easy virtue, born behind a shop,
brought up at its door to entice customers by her looks, and married,
accidentally, in consequence to a simple, unsophisticated man, who saw
her outside the door every morning when he went out, and every evening
when he came home.

"But do you not understand, you great booby," she said, "that I hate him
just because he married me, because he bought me; in fact, because
everything that he says and does, everything that he thinks, acts on my
nerves? He exasperates me every moment by his stupidity, which you call
his kindness, by his dullness, which you call his confidence, and then,
above all, because he is my husband, instead of you! I feel him between
us, although he does not interfere with us much. And then?... and
then?... No, it is, after all, too idiotic of him not to guess anything!
I wish he would at any rate be a little jealous. There are moments when
I feel inclined to say to him: 'Do you not see, you stupid creature,
that Paul is my lover?'"

Limousin began to laugh: "Meanwhile, it would be a good thing if you
were to keep quiet, and not disturb our life." "Oh! I shall not disturb
it, you may be sure! There is nothing to fear, with such a fool. No; but
it is quite incomprehensible that you cannot understand how hateful he
is to me, how he irritates me. You always seem to like him, and you
shake hands with him cordially. Men are very surprising at times."

"One must know how to dissimulate, my dear." "It is no question of
dissimulation, but of feeling. One might think that, when you men
deceive another, you liked him all the more on that account, while we
women hate the man from the moment that we have betrayed him." "I do not
see why one should hate an excellent fellow, because one has his wife."
"You do not see it?... You do not see it?... You all of you are wanting
in that fineness of feeling! However, that is one of those things which
one feels, and which one cannot express. And then, moreover, one ought
not.... No, you would not understand; it is quite useless. You men have
no delicacy of feeling."

And smiling, with the gentle contempt of a debauched woman, she put both
her hands onto his shoulders and held up her lips to him,