time by various devices. The idea struck her of
dressing in a way which would make her exactly like the portrait. Then,
knowing her husband's restless temper, she had her room lighted up with
unusual brightness, feeling sure that when he came in curiosity would
bring him there at once. Midnight had struck when, at the call of the
groom, the street gate was opened, and the artist's carriage rumbled in
over the stones of the silent courtyard.

"What is the meaning of this illumination?" asked Theodore in glad
tones, as he came into her room.

Augustine skilfully seized the auspicious moment; she threw herself into
her husband's arms, and pointed to the portrait. The artist stood rigid
as a rock, and his eyes turned alternately on Augustine, on the accusing
dress. The frightened wife, half-dead, as she watched her husband's
changeful brow--that terrible brow--saw the expressive furrows gathering
like clouds; then she felt her blood curdling in her veins when, with a
glaring look, and in a deep hollow voice, he began to question her:

"Where did you find that picture?"

"The Duchess de Carigliano returned it to me."

"You asked her for it?"

"I did not know that she had it."

The gentleness, or rather the exquisite sweetness of this angel's voice,
might have touched a cannibal, but not an artist in the clutches of
wounded vanity.

"It is worthy of her!" exclaimed the painter in a voice of thunder. "I
will be avenged!" he cried, striding up and down the room. "She shall
die of shame; I will paint her! Yes, I will paint her as Messalina
stealing out at night from the palace of Claudius."

"Theodore!" said a faint voice.

"I will kill her!"

"My dear----"

"She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he rides
well----"

"Theodore!"

"Let me be!" said the painter in a tone almost like a roar.

It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the end the frenzy
of passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not so
young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.

At eight o'clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surprising her
daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in disorder, holding a
handkerchief soaked with tears, while she gazed at the floor strewn with
the torn fragments of a dress and the broken fragments of a large gilt
picture-frame. Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the
wreck with a gesture of deep despair.

"I don't know that the los