She reminded Albert's friend of the unfair neglect she had suffered: of the position of her family--of her circle of friends, even of her fortune. She had not come to her marriage empty-handed. She was right. This was the consensus of opinion in Grenoble. Albert Derize, of lowly origin and with no money, had made a very good match, so everyone said, in marrying Mlle. Molay-Norrois. The Molay-Norrois have an excellent name and live in great style. It was true she had received as a dowry the sum of two hundred thousand francs, of which one quarter was still unpaid because of her two spendthrift brothers--one an officer, and the other an attaché of an embassy. The habits she had acquired at home permitted no economy either in her dress, in her house, nor in the number of her servants, so that her husband, with his thirty or forty thousand francs' yearly income, could scarcely keep up appearances in Paris. But it was known that the money for the upkeep of the house came or would come from her: that was an established fact, impossible to deny, and that no matter how many books he published, this would remain unchanged. Philippe, unconvinced, shook his head. Albert's fame became a career, and his work an obligation. And he looked almost with irritation at this obstinate forehead, half hidden by that childlike hair, at those eyes, so soft and peaceful, reflecting an ineradicable conviction. To convince him in her turn, she summed up as a formula a very simple argument. "I have fulfilled my duties and he has been unfaithful to his." Thus stated, the argument was simplifying itself. But the lawyer would not allow it to be so expressed: "Listen, Madame, it is a friend and a very sincere friend who is speaking to you. I have defended many divorces and separations: and I have never known, never, you understand--that the faults were all on one side." He did not add that his experience had proved to him for a long time that security, harmony and the union of a home depended more on the wife than on the husband; she makes or unmakes the family as she does the fortune. "Faults? What are mine?" asked Mme. Derize, smiling. "I should like to know what they are." "I do not know yet. But I am sure that they exist." Offended by this insistence, she defied him. "Really? Tell me what they are." He answered her in his own bantering way. "Perhaps I shall tell you some day." He was the first one who did not treat her as a victim, who did not pity her as a brave little martyr, and although she felt this opposition to be friendly, it hurt her. To conclude the conversation, she declared: "All is over between us.... I do not ..." She stopped short, puzzled by the confidence which came to her lips. What was she going to add? To find out he repeated in an insinuating tone: "You do not ...?" "I no longer love him." "Then you never loved him." "What do you mean?"