"The scene is Paris; the time some two years ago; the heroine is a friend of mine, a lady belonging to the highest society in France, whose fate had been similar to my own in one respect only: she too had married at sixteen, and been shortly after left a childless widow. Claudine--I give you her Christian name alone, for the other is unimportant to us--was not only, of course, much more beautiful than I, in fact, extraordinarily beautiful and much more gifted; she was also for good--and, as I may add without boasting, for evil--a much greater, more energetic creature. Not that I have anything very bad to say of dear Claudine, or, at least, nothing worse than has been said of many a woman who could not, perhaps, claim such weighty 'extenuating circumstances.' Her mother had, for reasons of her own, persuaded her into this marriage, which had turned out singularly unhappy. Her husband, although allowing for the difference of sex, he was scarcely older than she herself at the time of the marriage--he was then two-and-twenty--had, though so young, already managed to be acknowledged as one of the completest _roués_ of all Paris, in spite of the keen rivalry of his high-born compeers. He had seen in the innocent young girl only an additional mistress whom, after a brief period, one could neglect with the greater impunity, since one could feel sure of her, and since she, moreover, in spite of, or perhaps, rather because of, her pride, did not seem to belong to those troublesome women who make 'scenes.' And indeed, after she had realised what, from another side, was made clear to her, they had but one 'scene,' but a terrible one, a recurrence of which was both impossible and unnecessary. He thoroughly understood her then--and she had proved a hundred times the stronger of the two. He was allowed to continue his own way of living, on the one condition that he did not concern himself in the least about hers. And hers? Well, I told you hers was a passionate nature, and she was an unhappy wife; that combination can yield nothing but unhappiness. Fortunately for her, she was speedily set free from the worst impulse, the one which had poisoned and warped her passionate nature; for her husband died. She was free once more, and vowed to remain free. Not that she did not mean to marry again; in the circles where she lived, she could only by a second marriage escape from the bondage of those relationships into which one is forced as into a new fashion, abominable though you may think either. Her second marriage was but to guarantee her a clear position in the world; the other guarantees for peace and for freedom she thought she bore within herself. And so she made her choice.