eeing her. The
next night, toward midnight, I was seized by a feeling of melancholy
that I could not resist. I shed a torrent of tears; I overwhelmed myself
with reproaches that I richly deserved. I told myself that I was nothing
but a fool, and a cowardly fool at that, to make the noblest, the best
of creatures, suffer in this way. I ran to her to throw myself at her
feet.

Entering the garden, I saw that her room was lighted and a flash of
suspicion crossed my mind. "She does not expect me at this hour," I
said to myself; "who knows what she may be doing. I left her in tears
yesterday; I may find her ready to sing to-day and caring no more for me
than if I never existed. I must enter gently, in order to surprise her."

I advanced on tiptoe, and the door being open, I could see Brigitte
without being seen.

She was seated at her table and was writing in that same book that had
aroused my suspicions. She held in her left hand a little box of white
wood which she looked at from time to time and trembled. There was
something sinister in the quiet that reigned in the room. Her secretary
was open and several bundles of papers were carefully ranged in order.

I made some noise at the door. She rose, went to the secretary, closed
it, then came to me with a smile:

"Octave," she said, "we are two children. If you had not come here, I
should have gone to you. Pardon me, I was wrong. Madame Daniel comes
to dinner to-morrow; make me repent, if you choose, of what you call my
despotism. If you but love me I am happy; let us forget what is past and
let us not spoil our happiness."

CHAPTER III. EXPLANATIONS

But quarrel had been, so to speak, less sad than our reconciliation; it
was attended, on Brigitte's part, by a mystery which frightened me at
first and then planted in my soul the seeds of constant dread.

There developed in me, in spite of my struggles, the two elements of
misfortune which the past had bequeathed me: at times furious jealousy
attended by reproaches and insults; at other times a cruel gayety, an
affected cheerfulness, that mockingly outraged whatever I held most
dear. Thus the inexorable spectres of the past pursued me without
respite; thus Brigitte, seeing herself treated alternately as a
faithless mistress and a shameless woman, fell into a condition of
melancholy that clouded our entire life; and worst of all, that sadness
even, the cause of which I knew, was not the most burdensome of our
so