She was six years younger than her husband, whom, without knowing, she loved passionately and timidly. Silent as he was, indifferent, as a rule, and always preoccupied, nevertheless he depended upon her. She was the blank page at the end of a book, the instant’s repose for the emotions--she was a habit--she was his wife. Evremond was at the close of an affair; on his part, an affair not of business, but of the heart. For the past three months he had made desperate love to a woman not his wife. She had denied him nothing. And now it was over. Their meetings had taken place at her house and his own studio, he had seen her in her own boudoir, he had driven with her in the broad light of day through hidden alleys in the Bois. They had made sentimental journeys to the Louvre. Together they had sat in the public gardens of the Tuileries. For three long months they had amused themselves and each other. And now the affair was ended. Evremond was ready to yawn upon it already. Already the memory was becoming indistinct, blent with memories of other adventures so like to this one that it would require a useless effort to distinguish it. But this time there was something different in the ending of the romance, the happy ending reserved for sensitive readers. This afternoon at five they had met and parted in his studio, a sundering of friendship by mutual consent, with adieux into which both had tried to put feeling enough to justify the hours they had consecrated to each other. After she had gone he lingered in the familiar room. A long glass screen reflected the dying embers that had fallen red against the iron hearth of the stove. A certain perfume brought with a rush to his mind moments that now became intolerable to him. As he impatiently put the scenes from him, between the stove and the mirror, the mirror in which Evremond could not, try as he would, imagine himself alone, he saw a small gray spot on the polished floor. A handkerchief--no, a glove! He stooped, picked it up, and, as though in defiance of the bolder odors of heavier scent that hung in the air, a faint breath like an appeal came from the bit of _suède_ which held still the imprint of a woman’s hand. His heart seemed to stop as he turned the object over in his hand. It was a small gray glove, distinctly not the property of the woman to whom he had said good-by.