But women possess a sure instinct of mistrust, and from the first she had noticed that her love was repugnant to Hubert's cousin. She guessed that he saw only the whim of a _blasée_ woman where she herself saw a religion. A woman forgives formal slanders sooner than she forgives the tone in which she is spoken of, and she understood that the accent of George's voice as he pronounced her name was in absolute disagreement with the feelings with which she wished to inspire Hubert. And then, to keep back nothing, she had a past, and George might be acquainted with that past. A shudder passed through her at the mere idea of this. For these diverse reasons she had employed her shrewdest and most secret diplomacy to part the two cousins from each other. This work was now bearing its fruit, and was the means of inspiring Hubert with unconquerable distrust, while the cab was taking him to the club in the Rue du Cirque. "In what way," he thought, "can I question George? I cannot say to him: 'I am Madame de Sauve's lover, and you have accused her of having deceived me; prove it to me.'" The moral impossibility of such a conversation had become a physical one at the moment when the cab stopped in front of the club. "After all," said Hubert to himself, "I am a very child to trouble myself about what Monsieur George Liauran believes or does not believe." He dismissed his cab, and instead of entering the club, walked in the direction of the Champs Elysées. That which constitutes the marvellous essence and the unique charm of love, is that it gathers, as into a bundle, and sets vibrating in unison, the three beings within us, of thought, feeling, and instinct,--the brain, the heart, and all the flesh. But it is also this unison which forms its terrible infirmity. It remains defenceless against the encroachment of physical imagination, and this feebleness appears especially in the birth of jealousy. In this way is explained the monstrous facility with which suspicion rises in the soul of a man that knows himself loved above all others, if any particulars frame, before his mind's eye, a picture wherein he sees his mistress deceiving him. To be sure the lover does not believe in the truth of this picture, yet he is none the more able to forget it entirely, and it gives him pain until a proof comes to render the image absurd at every point. But as there enters a great part of physical life into the formation of the picture, the more material the proof is the more complete is the cure. It is exactly what happens to one awaking from a nightmare, when the assault of surrounding sensations comes to dissipate the torturing image which has occasioned the hallucination of the sleeper.