im."

She listened, humiliated but consoled, thinking how she would have
suffered had she found him generous.

In his simplicity he sincerely disdained her. This disdain relieved him.

"How did the thing happen? You can tell me."

She shrugged her shoulders with so much pity that he dared not continue.
He became contemptuous again.

"Do you imagine that I shall aid you in saving appearances, that I shall
return to your house, that I shall continue to call on your husband?"

"I think you will continue to do what a gentleman should. I ask nothing
of you. I should have liked to preserve of you the reminiscence of an
excellent friend. I thought you might be indulgent and kind to, me, but
it is not possible. I see that lovers never separate kindly. Later, you
will judge me better. Farewell!"

He looked at her. Now his face expressed more pain than anger. She never
had seen his eyes so dry and so black. It seemed as if he had grown old
in an hour.

"I prefer to tell you in advance. It will be impossible for me to see
you again. You are not a woman whom one may meet after one has been
loved by her. You are not like others. You have a poison of your own,
which you have given to me, and which I feel in me, in my veins. Why
have I known you?"

She looked at him kindly.

"Farewell! Say to yourself that I am not worthy of being regretted so
much."

Then, when he saw that she placed her hand on the latch of the door,
when he felt at that gesture that he was to lose her, that he should
never have her again, he shouted. He forgot everything. There remained
in him only the dazed feeling of a great misfortune accomplished, of
an irreparable calamity. And from the depth of his stupor a desire
ascended. He desired to possess again the woman who was leaving him and
who would never return. He drew her to him. He desired her, with all the
strength of his animal nature. She resisted with all the force of her
will, which was free and on the alert. She disengaged herself, crumpled,
torn, without even having been afraid.

He understood that everything was useless; he realized she was no longer
for him, because she belonged to another. As his suffering returned, he
pushed her out of the door.

She remained a moment in the corridor, proudly waiting for a word.

But he shouted again, "Go!" and shut the door violently.

On the Via Alfieri, she saw again the pavilion in the rear of the
courtyard where pale grasses grew. She found i