"I have come to tell you things that people do not talk about, but you must listen to me. I am very unhappy, my friend, and for very vulgar reasons. Ah! there is nothing romantic in my story. It is comprised in a single line: I love my wife and my wife does not love me. How and how greatly I love her you cannot understand--no, not even you. I am a timid, awkward fellow, I know, and have always known. When quite a young man, I pictured in my dreams the ideal face of a woman. I called her my madonna--but I am talking nonsense to you. Let me go on. It was she who comforted me for the rest--those who all treated me with scorn--and it was she that I loved. When I saw Helen, I found in her a likeness to this chimera such as I had never met with. Do not smile. Just understand me. I married her. At first I was quite sensible of the fact that she was not very happy. I said to myself: Time will bring everything right. Time has brought nothing right. The martyrdom that it has been to me to see her dull, wearied, and sad, and to be able to do nothing for her--ah! no one shall ever know. Especially since we have been living in Paris, I can see that she is sinking into still greater melancholy, that her poor face is growing thin and her eyes hollow. She is suffering and wasting away before my eyes, every day a little more, and I am unable to do anything and am ignorant of the cause. Can you understand what a torture it is to see a woman loved as I love her passing away hour by hour by my very side, and not even to know the reason?" He had risen as he uttered these words. In proportion as the phrases came to him, they swept away the plan of discourse which he had prepared on his way from the Rue de La Rochefoucauld to the Rue Lincoln. He had allowed himself to feel aloud. He passed his hand across his eyes and went on: "I am wandering. Why do I tell you all these things? I have come to ask you whether you know what is the matter with her." And he stopped in front of Armand, who also rose. The latter was trying to guess the object of his old companion's tirade. He was aware that in a conversation of this kind the chief point is to abstain from informing one's interlocutor of what he may not know. To Alfred's abrupt question he replied in the vaguest of formulas: "Why, how could I know any more than yourself?"