lecting everything, and was already beginning to think
that Risler did not watch his wife closely enough. He would have liked
him to be blind only so far as he was concerned.

Ah! if he had been her husband, what a tight rein he would have kept on
her! But he had no power over her and she was not at all backward about
telling him so. Sometimes, too, with the invincible logic that often
occurs to the greatest fools, he reflected that, as he was deceiving his
friend, perhaps he deserved to be deceived. In short, his was a wretched
life. He passed his time running about to jewellers and dry-goods
dealers, inventing gifts and surprises. Ah! he knew her well. He knew
that he could pacify her with trinkets, yet not retain his hold upon
her, and that, when the day came that she was bored--

But Sidonie was not bored as yet. She was living the life that she
longed to live; she had all the happiness she could hope to attain.
There was nothing passionate or romantic about her feeling for Georges.
He was like a second husband to her, younger and, above all, richer
than the other. To complete the vulgarization of their liaison, she had
summoned her parents to Asnieres, lodged them in a little house in
the country, and made of that vain and wilfully blind father and that
affectionate, still bewildered mother a halo of respectability of which
she felt the necessity as she sank lower and lower.

Everything was shrewdly planned in that perverse little brain, which
reflected coolly upon vice; and it seemed to her as if she might
continue to live thus in peace, when Frantz Risler suddenly arrived.

Simply from seeing him enter the room, she had realized that her repose
was threatened, that an interview of the gravest importance was to take
place between them.

Her plan was formed on the instant. She must at once put it into
execution.

The summer-house that they entered contained one large, circular room
with four windows, each looking out upon a different landscape; it was
furnished for the purposes of summer siestas, for the hot hours when one
seeks shelter from the sunlight and the noises of the garden. A broad,
very low divan ran all around the wall. A small lacquered table, also
very low, stood in the middle of the room, covered with odd numbers of
society journals.

The hangings were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among
bluish reeds--produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures
floating before one's