"I cannot think," he said, "what has come between us. I have the strange impression that certain things in me irritate him, unnerve him, displease him.--He is vexed with me about trifles that he would not even have noticed formerly; as, for example, my friendship with Corancez. Would you believe it? He reproached me yesterday for having witnessed the ceremony at Genoa, as though it were a crime.--And all because we met poor Marius and his wife in the train at Golfe Juan yesterday! "'Our nest is built there,' Corancez said to me, adding--these were his very words--that 'the bomb was going to explode,' meaning that Andryana was going to speak to her brother.--I told the story to Olivier to amuse him, and he flew into a temper, going so far as to talk of its being 'blackmail,' as though one could blackmail that abominable creature Navagero!--I replied to him, and he answered me.--You cannot imagine in what terms he spoke to me about myself, about the danger that I ran in frequenting the society of this place, of the unhappiness my change of tastes and ideas gave him.--He could not have talked more seriously had Cannes been tenanted by a gang of thieves who wished to enroll me in their ranks.--It is inexplicable, but the fact remains. He is pained, wounded, uneasy because I am happy here. Can you understand such madness in a friend whom I love so sincerely, who loves me so tenderly?" "That is the very reason why you must not feel angry," replied Ely. "When one suffers, one is unjust. And he is unhappy in his married life. It is so hard to have made a mistake in that way." She spoke in this way, prompted by a natural jealousy. Her passionate, ungovernable nature was too proud, too noble to employ the method of secretly poisoning the mind of husband or lover against friendships that are disliked, a method that wives and mistresses exercise with a sure and criminal knowledge. But to herself she said:-- "Olivier has discovered that Pierre loves some one. Does he suspect that it is I?" The reply to the question was not a doubtful one. Ely had too often noticed, when in Rome, the next to infallible perspicacity displayed by Olivier in laying bare the hidden workings of the love intrigues going on all around them. Although she continued, in spite of all, to hope in his honor, she dreaded, with a terror that became daily more intense, the moment when she would acquire the certitude that he knew. These two beings began to draw closer together by means of Hautefeuille, began to measure each other's strength, to penetrate each other's minds, even before the inevitable shock precipitated them into open conflict.