Olivier had not the least suspicion of this work going, on in Berthe's mind. Still less did he suspect that she had discovered the first name of this unknown mistress, a name whose very singularity had helped to betray it. It happened in this way: When they were married he had destroyed a number of letters, thrown a lot of faded flowers into the fire with many a portrait. Then--it is the common story of those mental _autos da fé_--his hand had trembled in taking up some of these relics, relics of a troubled, unhappy youth, of his youth. And this had made him treasure a portrait of Madame de Carlsberg, in profile, so beautiful, so clear cut, so marvellously like the profile of some antique medallion that he could not bear to burn it. He slipped the portrait into an envelope, and, some one happening to call upon him at this moment, he placed the envelope in a large portfolio in which he carried his papers. Then he forgot all about it. He had never thought about the portrait until he was in Egypt. Again he decided to burn it, and again he could not bear to destroy it. In the cosmopolitan society into which his diplomatic functions called him it is a frequent thing for women to give their photographs bearing their signatures to their friends, sometimes even to mere acquaintances. Ely's name written at the foot of the photograph, therefore, signified nothing. Berthe would never find the portrait, or if she did all that he would need to do would be to speak of her as an acquaintance. He, therefore, returned the photograph to its hiding-place in the portfolio, and one day the improbable happened in the simplest way in the world. They were staying at Luxor. He happened to be away from the hotel for a short time. Berthe, who during the entire journey kept the accounts of their expenses with a natural and cultivated exactitude, was looking for a bill that her husband had paid, and, without thinking, opened the portfolio. There she found the photograph. But the second half of Olivier's reasoning was faulty. She never thought of questioning him upon the subject. The presence of the portrait among Olivier's papers, the regal and singular beauty of the woman's face, the strangely foreign name, the elegant toilet, the place where the photograph had been taken,--Rome,--all told the young wife that this was the mysterious rival who had taken up such a large place in her husband's past. She thought about it continually. But she could not speak to Olivier without his thinking that she had spied upon him, that she had deliberately searched among his papers. And besides, what was there to ask him about? She divined all that she did not actually know. So she kept silent, her heart seared with this torturing and fatal curiosity.