There was only one way left for Ely to learn the truth, the talks that she had with Hautefeuille. How her suffering was intensified, how her agony was increased! Only from Hautefeuille could she hear of Olivier during the week. Through Hautefeuille she followed the tragedy being enacted in the heart of her former lover. To Pierre it was quite natural to tell his dear confidante of all the anxiety that his friend caused him. He never dreamt that the least important detail was full of significance for her. In every conversation with Pierre during the first eight days she descended deeper and deeper into the dangerous abyss of Olivier's thoughts. She saw a possible catastrophe approaching from the first,--a possible catastrophe that became a probability, even a certainty, at last. The first blow to Ely's hope was dealt upon the day following the dinner at Monte Carlo, when she again saw Pierre, not this time in the quiet intimacy of a nocturnal meeting, but at the big soirée which had been spoken about in the train. It was late when he arrived. The salons were quite full, for it was nearly eleven o'clock. "Olivier insisted upon keeping me," he said, excusing the lateness to Madame de Carlsberg. "I began to think he would never let me go." "He wanted to keep you for himself," she replied; "it is so long since he saw you." With a beating heart she waited to hear if Du Prat had manifested any repugnance when he knew that Pierre was coming to her house. "You must not wound the susceptibility of an old friend." "He is not susceptible," replied Pierre. "He knows well enough how attached I am to him. He kept me talking about his married life." And, he added, sadly:-- "He is so unhappy! His wife is so badly suited to him. She does not understand him He does not love her and she does not love him.--Ah! it is frightful!" So the rejuvenation of Olivier's heart by the love of a girl, the sentimental renewal upon which his former mistress had counted, was only one of her illusions. The man was unhappy in the very marriage in which she would have liked to see a sure guarantee of forgetfulness, the effacing of both their pasts. The revelation was so full of menace to the future of her own happiness that she felt she must know more, and she kept Pierre in a corner of the little salon, questioning him. They were near the foot of the private staircase leading to her room. By one of those contrasts that re-vivify in two lovers the fiery sweetness of their secret this salon, traversed by them with peril, in complete obscurity, hand clasping hand, this little salon, witness of their secret meetings, was now blazing with light, and the crowd moving about gave, as it does to all the fêtes on the Riviera, the sensation of a worldly aristocracy.