"He who sows the wind shall reap the tempest," says an Austrian proverb. When she wished to meet Hautefeuille, to make herself dear to him, she wanted to strike Du Prat in the tenderest, most vulnerable spot in his organization, to wound him through his friendship, to torture him through it, to avenge herself in this way. She had succeeded only too well! What blow was he going to strike in the rage of suffering now consuming him? She had changed so much since the moment she had conceived the project of cruel vengeance that she asked herself what she was to do, what path she was to take? What if she appealed to this man, made supplication to him, sought to melt his mood?--Or would it be better to play with him, to cause him to think no _liaison_ existed between her and Hautefeuille, for, after all, he had no proof.--Or better still, why not oppose a bold front, and when he dared to appear before her, drive him from her door, for he had no claim upon her.--Her pride revolted against the first, her nobility of character against the second, her reason against the third. In such a decisive crisis as the one through which the poor woman was passing, the mind calls instinctively upon all the most secret resources of nature, just as it collects, summons to the centre of the personality, all its hidden strength. Ely was remarkable by her need of truth and energy in the middle of a society that is refined to excess and composite to the verge of falsity. As she said to her confidante in the alleys of the Brions' garden, on that night that was so recent and seemed so distant, it was the truth in Hautefeuille's soul that had first of all attracted her, charmed her, seduced her. It was in order to live a true life, to feel true emotions, that she had entered the paths of this love, whose dangers she had foreseen. After having in thought taken up and laid down, accepted and rejected a score of projects, she finished by deciding within herself that she would trust to the simple truth in the redoubtable scene she felt was drawing near, thinking:-- "I will show him all my heart, just as it is, and he may trample on it if he can find the strength." This was the policy that this woman, capable of any error but not of meanness or common calculation, arrived at after her wretched wakefulness. She did not find forgetfulness in it for a peril drawing near. But it gave her the courage that every human being feels in being completely, absolutely logical in thought, wish, and belief. She was not, therefore, as much surprised as she even expected when, about ten o'clock, she received a note that proved how accurately she had reasoned. The letter was very short. But it was full of menace for her who read it in the same little salon where she had made up her mind to dismiss Pierre Hautefeuille,--a resolution that had been so weakly broken, and that had been prompted by the very terror of the catastrophe that the few lines announced:--