Her grief, her contemplation of the disaster to her faith in her husband, had left her shaken in all but her love. She loved him, and any life without him was intolerable for her to face. “But,” she reflected, “however much I may prefer a future with him to no matter what life without him, it does not follow that he would decide in the same way.” Yet for some intangible reason she believed it. She had arrived at the hour which presents itself sooner or later in the life of every married woman, the hour of combat whose issue decides the limit for all future relations. If she should go to him to-night--wounded vanity recalcitrant--she might stipulate conditions that should forever sunder their lives. Sunder their lives she believed for a passing fantasy, for a weakness, for a caprice on his part. If, on the contrary, she went to him with forgiveness, the very fact that there _was_ such need, that he was forced to receive it, would leave a scar. It requires more grace to forget forgiveness than to forgive. She knew her husband’s nature--it would rankle and corrode. She shrank from the ordeal of an explanation, of any rôle that would link her with this _liaison_. At all events, descent here at the friendly home was impossible. She gave her own address, Rue Leonard de Vinci, and directed a return through the Bois de Boulogne. The coachman, thinking he was driving a disappointed lady from a _rendezvous manqué_, said: “_Très bien, madame!_” with less cheerfulness than he had shown at the first instructions. Turning briskly through Passy to La Muette, and entering the Bois at that gate, he drove her along at a jogging pace toward home. Home--it had become this once again; not as yet destroyed and marred by torturing questions and recriminations--never, please God, so to be by her! If it had any sacredness, she would try to save it still; if the link were not too fragile, she would mend it; if there were a hearthstone left she would, if she might, kindle some warmth upon it still. “Perhaps,” she mused, “happiness is ended for my husband and me; at all events, I will not seek its destruction. Perhaps he wants to leave me and be free. He must prove it to me. He has not proved it yet. Perhaps I can learn to be to him more than any other woman can ever be--can charm him to me again as I did when I was a girl. I can try with all my heart.”