"You are angry with me?" he said.--"And yet you see that I came the moment I knew you were ill.--When you are well again I will explain all that has taken place. You will see that things have not been what you believe.--Ah! what suffering you would have spared us both if you had only spoken during the past few days!" "I do not condemn you," said the poor girl, "and I do not ask you to explain anything.--I love you and you do not love me; that is what I know. It is not your fault, but nothing can change it.--You have just been very good to me," she added, "and I thank you for it. I am so worn out that I would like to rest." "It is the beginning of the end," thought Olivier, as he passed into the salon in obedience to his wife's wish. "What will become of our household?--If I do not succeed in winning her back, in healing her wounded heart, it will mean a separation in a very short time, and for me it will mean the recommencement of an aimless life.--Heal her heart when my own is bleeding!--Poor child! How I have made her suffer!" Through all the complications caused by his impressionability, he had retained the conscience of an honorable man. It was too sensitive not to shrink with remorse from the answer to this question. But--who does not know it by experience?--neither remorse nor pity, the two noblest virtues of the human soul, has ever prevailed against the dominating frenzy of passion in a being who loves. Olivier's thoughts quickly turned from the consideration of poor Berthe to the opposite side. The fever of the kisses he had pressed on Ely's pale, quivering face burned in his veins. The image of his friend, of the lover to whom the woman now belonged, recurred to him at the same time, and his two secret wounds began to bleed again so violently that he forgot everything that did not concern Ely or Pierre, Pierre or Ely. And a keener suffering than any he had yet experienced attacked him. What was his friend, his brother, doing? What had become of the being to whom he had given so large a part of his very soul? What was still left of their friendship? What would there still be left to-morrow? Face to face with a prospective rupture with Hautefeuille, Olivier felt that this was for him the uttermost limit of anguish, the supreme stroke that he could not support. The wreck of his married life was a blow for which he was prepared. His frightful and desperate reflux of passion for Ely de Carlsberg was a horrible trial, but he would submit to it. But to lose his consecrated friendship, to possess no longer this unique sentiment in which he had always found a refuge, a support, a consolation, a reason for self-esteem and for believing in good, was the final destruction of all. After this there was nothing in life to which he could turn, no one for whom and with whom to live. It was the entrance into the icy night, into total solitude.