le again and stammered: "I do not understand you."

"Oh! yes; you understand me well enough. It is now three months since I
had my last child, and as I am still very beautiful, and as, in spite of
all your efforts you cannot spoil my figure, as you just now perceived,
when you saw me on the doorstep, you think it is time that I should
think of having another child."

"But you are talking nonsense!"

"No, I am not, I am thirty, and I have had seven children, and we have
been married eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for ten
years longer, after which you will leave off being jealous."

He seized her arm and squeezed it, saying: "I will not allow you to talk
to me like that much longer."

"And I shall talk to you till the end, until I have finished all I have
to say to you, and if you try to prevent me, I shall raise my voice so
that the two servants, who are on the box, may hear. I only allowed you
to come with me for that object, for I have these witnesses who will
oblige you to listen to me and to contain yourself, so now pay attention
to what I say. I have always felt an antipathy to you, and I have always
let you see it, for I have never lied, monsieur. You married me in spite
of myself; you forced my parents, who were in embarrassed circumstances,
to give me to you, because you were rich, and they obliged me to marry
you in spite of my tears.

"So you bought me, and as soon as I was in your power, as soon as I had
become your companion, ready to attach myself to you, to forget your
coercive and threatening proceedings, in order that I might only
remember that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it
might be possible for me to love you, you became jealous, you, as no man
has ever been before, with the base, ignoble jealousy of a spy, which
was as degrading to you as it was to me. I had not been married eight
months when you suspected me of every perfidiousness, and you even
told me so. What a disgrace! And as you could not prevent me from being
beautiful and from pleasing people, from being called in drawing-rooms
and also in the newspapers one of the most beautiful women in Paris, you
tried everything you could think of to keep admirers from me, and you
hit upon the abominable idea of making me spend my life in a constant
state of motherhood, until the time should come when I should disgust
every man. Oh, do not deny it. I did not understand it for some time,
but then I guessed