"Truly!" she exclaimed. "O dearest! And I feared to offend you!"

"Why should you think it would offend me?" he asked, smiling.

"You consent to go to confession?"

Instantly the smile in his eyes and on his lips was replaced by a gleam
of fury.

"And why should I not go to confession?" he demanded.

"But--"

"Do you suppose that I can be afraid to confess? Why do you suppose
that? Tell me why?"

He looked at her with eyes that pierced to her heart, as if they would
read her inmost thoughts.

Stupefied by this access of fury, which burst forth without any warning,
since he had smilingly replied to her request for a religious marriage,
she could find nothing to say, not understanding how the simple word
"confess" could so exasperate him. And yet she could not deceive
herself: is was indeed this word and no other that put him in this
state.

He continued to look at her, and wishing to explain herself, she said:
"I supposed only one thing, and that is that I might offend you by
asking you to do what is contrary to your beliefs."

The mad anger that carried him away so stupidly began to lose its first
violence; another word added to what had already escaped him would be an
avowal.

"Do not let us talk of it anymore," he said. "Above all, do not let us
think of it."

"Permit me to say one word," she replied. "Had I been situated like
other people I would have asked nothing; my will is yours. But for
you, for your future and your honor, you should not appear to marry in
secret, as if ashamed, with a pariah."

"Be easy. I feel as you do, more than you, the necessity of consecrated
ceremonies for us."

She understood that on this path he would go farther than she.

To destroy the impression of this unfortunate word, he proposed that
they should visit the apartment he had engaged the previous day.

For the first time they walked together boldly, with heads held high,
side by side in the streets of Paris, without fear of meeting others.
How proud she was! Her husband! It was on her husband's arm that she
leaned! When they crossed the Tuileries she was almost surprised that
people did not turn to see them pass.

In her present state of mind she could not but find the house he chose
admirable; the street was admirable, the house was admirable, the
apartment was admirable.

As it contained three bedrooms opening on a terrace, where he would keep
the animals for his experiments, Saniel wished to have her deci