till. He desired to win always, and he won his
daughter. He separated her from her mother. Therese admired him, she
adored him.

In her dream she saw him as the unique joy of her childhood. She was
persuaded that no man in the world was as amiable as her father.

At her entrance in life, she despaired at once of finding elsewhere
so rich a nature, such a plenitude of active and thinking forces. This
discouragement had followed her in the choice of a husband, and perhaps
later in a secret and freer choice.

She had not really selected her husband. She did not know: she had
permitted herself to be married by her father, who, then a widower,
embarrassed by the care of a girl, had wished to do things quickly and
well. He considered the exterior advantages, estimated the eighty years
of imperial nobility which Count Martin brought. The idea never came to
him that she might wish to find love in marriage.

He flattered himself that she would find in it the satisfaction of
the luxurious desires which he attributed to her, the joy of making a
display of grandeur, the vulgar pride, the material domination, which
were for him all the value of life, as he had no ideas on the subject
of the happiness of a true woman, although he was sure that his daughter
would remain virtuous.

While thinking of his absurd yet natural faith in her, which accorded
so badly with his own experiences and ideas regarding women, she smiled
with melancholy irony. And she admired her father the more.

After all, she was not so badly married. Her husband was as good as any
other man. He had become quite bearable. Of all that she read in the
ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences,
that of their married life was the most vague. She found a few isolated
traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting and fastidious impression.
The time had not seemed long and had left nothing behind. Six years had
passed, and she did not even remember how she had regained her liberty,
so prompt and easy had been her conquest of that husband, cold, sickly,
selfish, and polite; of that man dried up and yellowed by business and
politics, laborious, ambitious, and commonplace. He liked women only
through vanity, and he never had loved his wife. The separation had been
frank and complete. And since then, strangers to each other, they felt
a tacit, mutual gratitude for their freedom. She would have had some
affection for him if she had not found him