Had he not told me, and I had believed him, as usual, that he sometimes came there to work out of remembrance of me and to assure himself more solitude? I had not time to give myself up to the sweet emotion this thought awakened in my heart. I could recognize two voices, his and the other woman’s.” “The voice of Madam de Bonnivet?” I asked as she remained silent after the last few words, which were hardly audible. I was as much moved by her story as she was herself. She bent her head to signify “yes” and maintained her silence, so I dare not insist. The tragedy of the situation, the facts of which she had placed before me so simply, crushed me. She went on— “I cannot describe to you what passed in me when I heard this woman, who, thinking herself alone with her lover, was laughing loudly and talking familiarly to him. I felt a sharp pain, as if the keen point of a knife had wounded me in the inmost part of my being, and I began to tremble in the whole of my body on the chair upon which I was sitting. But even now at the thought, look at my hands! I desired to get up, to go to them, and to drive them away, but I could not. I could not even cry out. It seemed to me as if my life suddenly stood still in me. I heard and listened. It was a pain greater than death, and I really thought I should die where I sat! But here I am, and do you know the reason? In that small room where I stayed like that without moving, after the first moment of fearful pain had passed, I was overcome by disgust, by inexpressible repugnance and horror which was absolutely nauseating. Without a doubt if I had distinctly heard the words of this man and woman the need of immediate vengeance would have been too strong for me; but the indistinct, confused murmur, consisting of words I could hear and words I could not hear, combined with the picture of what I guessed was taking place on the other side of the wall, besides the unutterable suffering it caused me, gave me an impression of something very dirty, very ignoble, very disgusting, and very abject. There was one phrase in particular, and such a phrase which made me feel that I despised Jacques more than I loved him, and at the same time—how strange the heart is!—I could only grasp the idea that if I entered the room he would think that I came there to spy upon him. That pride in my feelings ended by dominating everything else. I remained motionless in this small room for perhaps an hour. Then they departed and I went into the room they had just left. The bed was in disorder, but the pillows and bedclothes were the same. Ah,” she groaned, uttering a cry which rent my heart, and pressing her fingers into her eyes as if to crush the eyeballs and with them a horrible vision of other infamous details which she would not, could not mention then she cried: “Save me from myself, Vincent. My friend, my only friend, do not leave me; I believe my head will burst and I shall go mad! Oh, that bed! that bed! our bed!”