Emilie said no more. She had not been mistaken in her brother's accents. René was in pain, and his anger against Claude was very great; but since he was silent concerning its cause, his sister knew that the latter must be something more than a mere literary dispute. By that intuition which always accompanies tender affection, Emilie guessed that the two writers had quarrelled on account of Madame Moraines, whose name René never mentioned now, and whom she was beginning to hate for the same reasons that had at first prompted her to like her. For some weeks past she had noticed a great mental and physical change coming over her brother. Although a model of purity herself, she was shrewd enough to attribute this degeneration to its true cause. She noticed it as she copied the fragments of the 'Savonarola' in the same way as she had copied the 'Sigisbée'; and although her admiration for the lightest trifle that came from René's pen was intense, there were many signs by which she could see how differently the two works had been inspired--from the number of lines written at each sitting to the continual reconstruction of the scenes and even to the handwriting, which had lost a little of its bold character. The bubbling spring of clear, fresh poetry in which the 'Sigisbée' had had its source seemed to have dried up. What change had taken place in René's life? A woman had entered it, and it was therefore to this woman's influence that Emilie attributed the momentary impairment of the poet's faculties. She went still further, and hated this unknown but formidable creature for the pain inflicted on Rosalie. By a strange lapse of memory, frequently met with in generous natures, she forgot what part she had herself taken in her brother's rupture with his former _fiancée._ It was Madame Moraines whom she blamed for it all, and now this same woman was embroiling René with the best and most devoted of his friends--the one whom his faithful sister preferred because she had gauged the strength of his friendship. 'But how could it have happened,' she thought, 'since Claude is not here?' She cudgelled her brains for a solution to this problem whilst attending to her household duties, hearing Constant's home lessons, making out Fresneau's bills, and conscientiously examining every button-hole and seam of her brother's linen. René was shut up in his room, where everything reminded him of Suzanne's one heavenly visit, and with feverish impatience he awaited the day appointed for their next meeting. Slander was doing its secret work, like some venomous sting. A poisoned man will go about without knowing that he is ill, except for a vague feeling of restlessness, but all the while the virus is fermenting in his blood and will produce sudden and terrible results.