"From Auteuil. I walked because I did not feel well. And you?" he questioned, with an anxiety grown terrible once more. "I have been shopping," she replied. Ah! why had he not the courage to tell her that she had just uttered a falsehood? He sat down with the sharp point buried still deeper in his heart. She let the conversation drop, and resumed her book. "A frightful novel that Monsieur De Querne lent me," she said. "It is the story of a woman who deceives her lover, and does so while loving him. Authors don't know what to invent nowadays." Her eyes shone as she uttered these words. She had pronounced the word "lover" with an intonation which distressed Alfred. She seemed to impart a mysterious depth to those two syllables. Ah! he would have given his blood at that moment to have her speak to him of her walk! After all, she had perhaps attached no importance to her reply. But neither then, nor at dinner, nor during the evening that followed, did she breathe a word about it. About ten o'clock, Armand arrived in his dress coat; he was going out afterwards. She received him with the words: "You have been quite well since yesterday?" Ah, the deceiver! the deceiver! Alfred had seated himself at the corner of a table under the pretence of having some papers to examine, and from time to time he watched them conversing, those two beings whom he loved best of all the world. Was it possible that a criminal mystery united them, and at the expense of himself, whom they had betrayed? This Armand, whom he had seen playing in his schoolboy dress--had he been his brother he could not have loved him more. What nobility of brow! what grace of gesture! And this was the man who was a villain, for to deceive such a friend as himself was villainy. And she, with her medallion-like profile, with her modesty and proud reserve! No; it was he, Alfred, who was losing his senses. A walk in a garden--what could be more innocent? Perhaps--for he knew that she was charitable, and so did Armand--yes, perhaps, they were both going to visit the poor. But, then, why this reticence? why this deception? And why did he himself keep silence? To this he could have given no reply, except that speaking was beyond his strength, just as acting had lately been. And Armand and Helen conversed with tranquillity. He listened to their voices uttering words of unconcern, and all his dim suspicions, all his repressed doubts, came back simultaneously to his soul. CHAPTER VI When Alfred Chazel had said good-night to Helen as usual and was left alone, he began to suffer with an intensity of which he himself could not have believed himself capable. He had now no longer any need to discuss the fact. His wife had lied to him. The clearness of this simple fact prostrated him. He could hear her say in that voice whose slightest inflections he knew so well: "How have you been since yesterday?"