of saying _No_,
and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not a treatise on
the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic,
and moral work, still waiting to be written? But to accomplish this
work, which we may also call diabolic, isn't an androgynous genius
necessary? For that reason, probably, it will never be attempted. And
besides, of all unpublished works isn't it the best known and the best
practised among women? Have you studied the behavior, the pose, the
_disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it.

Madame Desmarets was seated in the right-hand corner of her carriage,
her husband in the left. Having forced herself to recover from her
emotion in the ballroom, she now affected a calm demeanor. Her husband
had then said nothing to her, and he still said nothing. Jules looked
out of the carriage window at the black walls of the silent houses
before which they passed; but suddenly, as if driven by a determining
thought, when turning the corner of a street he examined his wife, who
appeared to be cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was
wrapped. He thought she seemed pensive, and perhaps she really was
so. Of all communicable things, reflection and gravity are the most
contagious.

"What could Monsieur de Maulincour have said to affect you so keenly?"
said Jules; "and why does he wish me to go to his house and find out?"

"He can tell you nothing in his house that I cannot tell you here," she
replied.

Then, with that feminine craft which always slightly degrades virtue,
Madame Jules waited for another question. Her husband turned his face
back to the houses, and continued his study of their walls. Another
question would imply suspicion, distrust. To suspect a woman is a crime
in love. Jules had already killed a man for doubting his wife. Clemence
did not know all there was of true passion, of loyal reflection, in her
husband's silence; just as Jules was ignorant of the generous drama that
was wringing the heart of his Clemence.

The carriage rolled on through a silent Paris, bearing the couple,--two
lovers who adored each other, and who, gently leaning on the same
silken cushion, were being parted by an abyss. In these elegant coupes
returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how
many curious and singular scenes must pass,--meaning those coupes with
lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, those with their
windows unshaded; in s