Without doubt if poor Ely had not been the disabused nihilist who believed, as she once said energetically, that "there is only this world," all the obscure fatalities that were crushing her down would have been made clear with a blinding light. She would have recognized a mysterious justice, stronger than our intentions, more infallible than our calculations, in the encounter that made the punishment of her double adultery issue from the friendship of those who had been her guilty partners in her failings, and caused those same accomplices to be each a punishment to the other. But in the blow that overwhelmed her she saw only the base vengeance of a former lover. And such a form of suffering could only end in degrading her. All her virtues of generous indulgence, of tender goodness, of sentimental scrupulousness that her love, magnificent in its enthusiastic spontaneity, had awakened in her heart, had receded from her. And she felt that all the most hideous and all her worst instincts were taking their place at the idea that these two men, both of whom had possessed her, one of whom she loved to the verge of madness, despised her. And in imagination she again saw Pierre as he was there before her, only twenty-four hours before, so devoted, so noble, so happy!--Ah! Pierre!--All her bitterness melted into a flood of tears as she cried aloud the beloved name. Ah! to what good was it that she cried for him? The man for whom such passionate sighs were breathed would not even listen to them!