"We saw them," said the narrator, "through the telescope, from the upper room in Arthur's, châlet that he uses as a studio, as though they had been only three yards distant. She entered, in fact, as we had heard that she did the day before, and she had scarcely done so when he gave her a kiss--but such a kiss! . . ." and he smacked his lips as he drained a last drop of liqueur that had remained in his glass. "Who is 'he'?" asked George Liauran. "La Croix-Firmin." "And 'she'?" "Madame de Sauve." "By Jove!" said George to himself, "this is a strange business; it was worth while accepting this fool's invitation." And with this thought he looked at his host--an exquisite of low degree--who was exulting with joy at entertaining a few clubmen who were quite in the fashion. "We were expecting something better," the other went on to say, "but she insisted on lowering the curtains. How we chaffed Ludovic about his jaded look in the morning! Nothing else was spoken of for a week between Trouville and Deauville. She suspected it, for she left very quickly. But I will wager a pony that she will be received everywhere this winter as well as before. The tolerance of Society is becoming----" "Home-like," said the interlocutor, and the talk continued to go round, the cigars to be smoked, the kummel cognac to fill the little glasses, and these moralists to pass judgment upon life. The young man who had told the scandalous anecdote about Madame de Sauve in the course of the conversation, was about thirty years old, pale, slight, already used up, and, for the rest, very amiable and one of those whose name universally attracts the epithet of "good fellow." In fact he would have blown his brains out sooner than not have paid a gambling debt within the appointed time. He had never declined an affair of honour, and his friends could rely upon him for a service though difficult, or an advance of money though considerable. But as to speaking, after drinking, of what one knows about the intrigues of women of the world, where should we be if we tried to forbid ourselves this subject of conversation, as well as hypotheses concerning the secrets of the birth of adulterine children? Perhaps the very chatterer who had borne eye-witness to the levity of Theresa de Sauve would have shed genuine tears of sorrow if he had known that his speech would have been employed as a weapon against the young woman's happiness. It is an exhaustless source of melancholy for one who mixes with the world without corrupting his heart, to see how cruelties are sometimes effected in it with complete security of conscience. But furthermore, would not George Liauran have learnt from another source all the details which the indiscretion of his table companion had just revealed to him so suddenly and with such unassailable precision?