that I could have loved you. I am thus candid with you because I wish
you to know how entirely I rely upon your discretion and respect. We
may have happiness denied us, and to choose it now would be to suffer
miserably, but we have each a personal esteem to guard. Ah, Paul! be
kind to me. Do not make it hard to see you again.'

If all this were written, as Paul came most devoutly to believe in later
days, with the single-minded desire to enslave him yet more completely,
it was truly heartless, but that was certainly the end it gained. It
seemed to him the most pathetic and womanly of effusions, for what woman
would write that she could have loved a man in happier conditions unless
she did truly love him? She suffered as he suffered. Without her warrant
it would have been coxcombical to believe it But the belief made her
altogether sacred in his eyes, and he vowed a thousand times that
no word or tone of his should ever offend that angel delicacy and
tenderness. A curious part of this maniac experience was his estimate of
himself as it proceeded. He was in a mood entirely heroical. The Baron
de Wyeth, who was making money to supply the most whimsical needs of the
absent Gertrude, never entered into his head. It did not offer itself on
any single occasion to his intelligence to think that there was anything
to be reprehended in this sterile dalliance.

As for Annette, she had grown to be impossible. She resented the
guardianship exercised over her with an increasing fierceness. When
she could smuggle her contraband through the enemy's lines, she locked
herself in her room, and remained there until the supply was exhausted
She would emerge blotched, pale, and haggard, and companionship between
herself and her husband was out of question.

At the time at which the letter just cited reached Paul Annette's
cunning had been unequal to the war for at least a fortnight, and her
constitution was still youthful and strong enough to enable her
to return to something of her earlier aspect after a few days of
abstinence.

'I have business which will take me to Paris in a little while,' her
husband told her.

'Very well,' she said indifferently.

'Do you prefer to come with me, or to stay here?' he asked.

'To go with you?'she demanded. 'Under what conditions?'

'Under the conditions I have always offered,' he returned: 'that you are
accompanied by a female companion of my choice.'

'I shall stay here,' Annette said curtly