When Amédée Bazouge, a Parisian tenor who had settled in London, first met her, he was surfeited with various blonde beauties of the baser sort, and in a sentimental mood, during which he frequently invoked the memory of his mother, he chose to fall desperately in love with little brown Yvonne, likening her to the Blessed Virgin and as many saints as he recollected. Yvonne was very young; this sudden worship was new to her; the pain in his heart that he so passionately dwelt upon seemed a terrible thing for her to have caused. She married him because he said that his life was at stake. She gave him herself as she would have given sixpence to a poor man in the street. Why she was necessary to his life’s happiness she could not guess. However, Amédée said so, and she took it on faith. For a while she was mildly content in his exuberant delight. He whispered, in soft honeymoon hours, “_m’aimes-tu?_”--and she said “Yes,” because she knew it would please him; but she was always happier at other times, when she was not called upon for display or expression of feeling. She liked him well enough. His somewhat common handsomeness pleased her, his effervescent fancy and boulevard wit kept her lightly amused, and his vehement passion provided her with an interest strangely compounded of fright, wonder, and pity. But Amédée Bazouge was not made either by nature or education for the domestic virtues. His repentant mood passed away; he forgot the memory of his mother, and found Yvonne’s innocence grow insipid. He hankered after the strange goddesses with their full-flavoured personalities, their cynicism, their passions, and their stimulating variety. Regret came to him for having broken with the last, who always kept him in a state of delicious uncertainty whether she would overwhelm him with passionate kisses or break the looking-glass in a tempest of wrath. So, gradually, he sought satisfaction for his reactionary yearnings and drifted away from Yvonne. And then she grew unhappy. He did not treat her unkindly. In all their dealings with each other a harsh word never passed the lips of either. But she felt cold and neglected. Instead of being met after a concert and accompanied to their little house at Staines, she went the long journey alone. The quiet evenings of music and singing together were things of the past. Often a week elapsed without their meeting. To complete her trouble, her mother died suddenly, and Yvonne felt very lonely. She would sit sometimes and cry like a lost child.