hings. One felt that his head was closed up,
that no ideas circulated in it, none of those ideas which renew a
man's mind and make it sound, like a breath of fresh air passing
through an open window into a house.

The chateau in which we lived was situated in the midst of a desolate
tract of country. It was a large, melancholy structure, surrounded by
enormous trees, with tufts of moss on it resembling old men's white
beards. The park, a real forest, was enclosed in a deep trench called
the ha-ha; and at its extremity, near the moorland, we had big ponds
full of reeds and floating grass. Between the two, at the edge of a
stream which connected them, my husband had got a little hut built for
shooting wild ducks.

We had, in addition to our ordinary servants, a keeper, a sort of
brute devoted to my husband to the death, and a chambermaid, almost a
friend, passionately attached to me. I had brought her back from Spain
with me five years before. She was a deserted child. She might have
been taken for a gipsy with her dusky skin, her dark eyes, her hair
thick as a wood and always clustering around her forehead. She was at
the time sixteen years old, but she looked twenty.

The autumn was beginning. We hunted much, sometimes on neighboring
estates, sometimes on our own; and I noticed a young man, the Baron de
C----, whose visits at the chateau became singularly frequent. Then he
ceased to come; I thought no more about it; but I perceived that my
husband changed in his demeanor towards me.

He seemed taciturn and preoccupied; he did not kiss me; and, in spite
of the fact that he did not come into my room, as I insisted on
separate apartments in order to live a little alone, I often at night
heard a furtive step drawing near my door, and withdrawing a few
minutes after.

As my window was on the ground-floor I thought I had also often heard
someone prowling in the shadow around the chateau. I told my husband
about it, and, having looked at me intently for some seconds, he
answered:

"It is nothing--it is the keeper."

* * * * *

Now, one evening, just after dinner, Herve, who appeared to be
extraordinarily gay, with a sly sort of gaiety, said to me:

"Would you like to spend three hours out with the guns, in order to
shoot a fox who comes every evening to eat my hens?"

I was surprised. I hesitated; but, as he kept staring at me with
singular persistency, I ended by replying:

"Why,