assed almost without suffering, affected
only by Olivier's love and concerned only by her anxiety to retain
it. She had succeeded, always victorious in that struggle. Her heart,
soothed by success and by flattery, had become the exacting heart of a
beautiful worldly woman to whom are due all the good things of earth,
and, after consenting to a brilliant marriage, with which affection had
nothing to do, after accepting love later as the complement of a happy
existence, after taking her part in a guilty intimacy, largely from
inclination, a little from a leaning toward sentiment itself as a
compensation for the prosaic hum-drum of daily life, had barricaded
itself in the happiness that chance had offered her, with no other
desire than to defend it against the surprises of each day. She had
therefore accepted with the complacency of a pretty woman the agreeable
events that occurred; and, though she ventured little, and was troubled
little by new necessities and desires for the unknown; though she
was tender, tenacious, and farseeing, content with the present, but
naturally anxious about the morrow, she had known how to enjoy the
elements that Destiny had furnished her with wise and economical
prudence.

Now, little by little, without daring to acknowledge it even to herself,
the vague preoccupation of passing time, of advancing age, had glided
into her soul. In her consciousness it had the effect of a gnawing
trouble that never ceased. But, knowing well that this descent of life
was without an end, that once begun it never could be stopped, and
yielding to the instinct of danger, she closed her eyes in letting
herself glide along, that she might retain her dream, that she might not
be seized with dizziness at sight of the abyss or be made desperate by
her impotence.

She lived, then, smiling, with a sort of factitious pride in remaining
beautiful so long, and when Annette appeared at her side with the
freshness of her eighteen years, instead of suffering from this
contrast, she was proud, on the contrary, of being able to command
preference, in the ripe grace of her womanhood, over that blooming young
girl in the radiant beauty of first youth.

She had even believed that she had entered upon the beginning of a
happy, tranquil period when the death of her mother struck a blow at
her heart. During the first few days she was filled with that profound
despair that leaves no room for any other thought. She remained from
mor