She seemed to step out of her poetic visions as though she were afraid of profaning them, and with a curiosity this time as real as her artificial emotion was apparent, she said: 'I am sure you did not write these lines for your play?' 'That is true,' replied René, with another blush. He had scruples about lying to this woman, even to please her. But how could he tell her the sad and wretched story which, with a poet's touch, he had transformed into a romantic idyll? 'Ah! you men!' she went on, without waiting for further reply--'how full your life is, and how free! But you must not think I am complaining. We Christian wives know our duty, and a beautiful one it is--obedience.' After a moment's silence she added: 'Alas! we do not always choose our master,' and then, in a tone of mingled resignation and pride that both suggested and forbade further speculation, 'I am sorry I have not been able to introduce you to Monsieur Moraines yet I hope you will like him. He is not much interested in art, but he is a very clever man in business. Unfortunately we live in an age when one must be born in Israel to get on well.' As may be imagined, there was not the slightest anti-Semitic feeling in Suzanne, who was always very glad to receive invitations to dine at two or three Jewish houses of princely hospitality, but it had struck her that these words would intensify the halo of piety with which she had endeavoured to invest herself in the poet's eyes. 'You will find my husband somewhat reserved at first,' she continued; 'it was my ambition to make my drawing-room a rendez-vous of writers and artists, but you know that business men are a little jealous of you all, and then Monsieur Moraines doesn't care for society much. He was not at Madame Komof's the other night; he likes to move just in a small circle, and have only well-known faces about him.' She spoke with an air of constraint, as if she meant to say, 'You must excuse me if I cannot ask you to come and see me here as I should like.' This constrained air also meant that this lovely woman must have been sacrificed (not that she was ever heard to complain) to cold social considerations which take no account whatever of sentiment. Already, in René's imagination, Paul Moraines, that amiable and jovial fellow, had become a crotchety and bad-tempered husband, to whom this creature of a superior race was bound by the terrible chains of duty. In addition to the passion that animated him, he felt for her that pity which the less a woman deserves it the more she loves to inspire. Tempering the pointedness of his reply by the generality in which he clothed it, he made bold to say, 'I wish I could tell you how often, when I have wandered as far as the Champs-Elysées, I have longed to know the secret of the sadness I imagined I saw on certain faces. It has always seemed to me that the troubles of the wealthy are the worst, and that mental anguish in the midst of material well-being is most to be pitied.'