had come back to her all the flood of jealous sensuality that had sullied her formerly to so great an extent that the traces were still to be seen. After he had outraged her, trampled her under foot, left her, after having placed the irreparable obstacle of marriage and desertion between them, she felt and understood this monstrous thing, one impossible in any other man, but quite natural in him, that Olivier loved her still. He loved her, if it can be called love to have for a woman that detestable mixture of passion and hatred which calls forth incessantly the cruelty of enjoyment, the ferocity of pleasure. He loved her. His attitude toward her would have been inexplicable without this anomalous, hideous sentiment which had lived in him through all and in spite of all! And, at the same time, he treasured his friend with that jealous, stormy, passionate friendship which was tearing his heart at this moment with unheard-of emotions and sufferings. To what extent might he not be led by the frenzy of such torture agonizing as a steel blade turned and re-turned in a wound? What could equal the pain of having loved, of still loving, a former mistress,--of loving her with such evil, sinister love,--and of knowing that woman was the mistress of his best, his most tenderly beloved friend, of a brother by adoption, cherished more than a brother by blood? As clearly as she saw the first rays of dawn piercing the curtains at the end of this night of terrified meditation, Ely saw these sentiments at work in Olivier's heart.