uer, and qualified
only to cause each other's death. Marriage made love a crime; love made
marriage a torture. She could only choose between two abysses: shame in
her love, despair in her virtue.

The hours passed rapidly in these sad and gloomy meditations; the clock
marked the hour of midnight. Madame de Bergenheim thought it time to try
to sleep; but, instead of ringing for her maid, she decided to go to the
library herself and get a book, thinking that perhaps it might aid
her in going to sleep. As she opened the door leading into the closet
adjoining her parlor, she saw by the light of the candle which she held
in her hand something which shone like a precious stone lying upon the
floor. At first she thought it might be one of her rings, but as she
stooped to pick it up she saw her error. It was a ruby pin mounted
in enamelled gold. She recognized it, at the very first glance, as
belonging to M. de Gerfaut.

She picked up the pin and returned to the parlor. She exhausted in
imagination a thousand conjectures in order to explain the presence of
this object in such a place. Octave must have entered it or he could not
have left this sign of his presence; it meant that he could enter her
room at his will; what he had done once, he could certainly do again!
The terror which this thought gave her dissipated like a dash of cold
water all her former intoxicating thoughts; for, like the majority of
women, she had more courage in theory than in action. A moment before,
she had invoked Octave's image and seated it lovingly by her side.

When she believed this realization possible, all she thought of was to
prevent it. She was sure that her lover never had entered the closet
through the parlor, as he never had been in this part of the house
farther than the little drawing-room. Suddenly a thought of the little
corridor door struck her; she remembered that this door was not usually
locked because the one from the library was always closed; she knew that
Octave had a key to the latter, and she readily understood how he had
reached her apartment. Mustering up all her courage through excessive
fear, she returned to the closet, hurried down the stairs, and pushed
the bolt. She then returned to the parlor and fell upon the divan,
completely exhausted by her expedition.

Little by little her emotion passed away. Her fright appeared childish
to her, as soon as she believed herself sheltered from danger; she
promised herself to giv