NOTWITHSTANDING first appearances, and though each of them did his best, Uncle Edouard and Bernard were only getting on together fairly well. Laura was not feeling satisfied, either. How should she be? Circumstances had forced her to assume a part for which she was not fitted; her respectability made her feel uncomfortable in it. Like those loving and docile creatures who make the most devoted wives, she had need of the proprieties to lean on, and felt herself without strength now that she was without the frame of her proper surroundings. Her situation as regards Edouard seemed to her more and more false every day. What she suffered from most and what she found unendurable, if she let her mind dwell on it, was the thought that she was living at the expense of this protector--or rather that she was giving him nothing in exchange--or more exactly, that Edouard asked nothing of her in exchange, while she herself felt ready to give him everything. “Benefits,” says Tacitus, through the mouth of Montaigne, “are only agreeable as long as one can repay them”; no doubt this is only true of noble souls, but without question Laura was one of these. She, who would have liked to give, was on the contrary continually receiving, and this irritated her against Edouard. Moreover when she went over the past in her mind, it seemed to her that Edouard had deluded her by awakening a love in her which she still felt strong within her and then by evading this love and leaving it without an object. Was not that the secret motive of her errors--of her marriage with Douviers, to which she had resigned herself, to which Edouard had led her--and then of her yielding so soon after to the solicitations of the springtime? For she must needs admit it to herself, in Vincent’s arms it was still Edouard that she sought. And as she could not understand her lover’s coldness, she accused herself of being responsible for it, and imagined that she might have vanquished him, had she had more beauty or more boldness; and as she could not succeed in hating him, it was herself she upbraided and depreciated, denying herself all value, and refusing to allow herself any reason for existing or the possession of any virtue. Let us add further that this camping-out style of life, necessitated by the arrangement of the rooms, though it might seem amusing to her companions, hurt her delicacy in many sensitive places. And she could see no issue to the situation, which yet was one it would be difficult to prolong.