She was married, and although she had at all times had a room of her own, she was sometimes obliged to receive her husband in it. Alas! it was all the more necessary because she had a lover. It was a sinister expiation of her passion, and one which she justified on her part by telling herself that she owed as much to Hubert. If she ever became a mother could she fly with him and take from him his whole life? and the pitiless necessity of baleful lies and degrading partitions would thus come to torture her at the height of her happiness. She acquitted herself, nevertheless, since it was for him, her darling, that she lied. Yes, but what monstrous enigma suddenly reared itself before her? Oh, the cruel, cruel enigma! With this divine love in her heart, how had she been able to do what she had done? For it had been, indeed, herself, and none other--she, with those feet of hers which now were feeling icy cold, with those hands which now were pressing her feverishly-throbbing brow--she, in short, with her whole physical being, who had left for Trouville at the end of the month of July--she, Theresa de Sauve, who had installed herself for the season in a villa on the hill. Yes, it had been herself. And yet no! It was not possible that Hubert's mistress had done this. What--this? Oh, cruel, cruel enigma! From what depths of the memory of her senses had there issued those strange impulses, those secret, lustful temptations which had commenced to assail her? But have the senses really a memory? Can it be that the guilty fevers will not depart for ever from the blood which they have fired in evil hours? Once settled in her villa, she had met again with old friends who had been greatly neglected since the beginning of her connection with Hubert. With these women and their admirers--their "fancy men," as a lady said who mixed in their "set"--she had formed several very cheerful and innocent country parties, and here she was, day by day, beginning, not to love Hubert less, but to live somewhat apart from her love, and to take pleasure anew in habits of masculine familiarities which she had forbidden to herself for a year past. She was so idle in her villa with no indoor occupation--not even reading. For she had never liked books much, and her connection with Alfred Fanières had disgusted her for ever with the falsity of fine phrases. When she had written lengthily to Hubert, and then briefly to her husband--who, moreover, came to see her every week--it was necessary to beguile the tedious hours; and at times fitful thoughts came to her which she dared not acknowledge to herself. Hankerings after sensations arose within her, and astonished her.