“It’s always when a woman appears most resigned that she seems the most reasonable,” she cried, almost vindictively. This reflection irritated me, by reason of its very justice. In order not to show it, I asked: “Anything new about the letters?” “New? New?... What on earth that’s new can happen between Oscar and me?” “He was expecting an explanation.” “So was I. I was expecting an explanation. All one’s life long one expects explanations.” “Well, but,” I continued, rather annoyed, “Oscar felt that he was in a false situation.” “But, my dear friend, you know well enough that nothing lasts more eternally than a false situation. It’s the business of you novelists to try to solve them. In real life nothing is solved; everything continues. We remain in our uncertainty; and we _shall_ remain to the very end without knowing what to make of things. In the mean time life goes on and on, the same as ever. And one gets resigned to that too; as one does to everything else ... as one does to everything. Well, well, good-bye.” I was painfully affected by a new note in the sound of her voice, which I had never heard before; a kind of aggressiveness, which forced me to think (not at the actual moment, perhaps, but when I recalled our conversation) that Pauline accepted my relations with Olivier much less easily than she said; less easily than all the rest. I am willing to believe that she does not exactly reprobate them, that from some points of view she is glad of them, as she lets me understand; but, perhaps without owning it to herself, she is none the less jealous of them. This is the only explanation I can discover for her sudden outburst of revolt, so soon after, and on a subject which, on the whole, she had much less at heart. It was as though by granting me at first what cost her more, she had exhausted her whole stock of benignity and suddenly found herself with none left. Hence her intemperate, her almost extravagant language, which must have astonished her herself, when she came to recall it, and in which her jealousy unconsciously betrayed itself. In reality, I ask myself, what can be the state of mind of a woman who is not resigned? An “honest woman,” I mean.... As if what is called “honesty” in woman did not always imply resignation! This evening Olivier is perceptibly better. But returning life brings anxiety along with it. I reassure him by every device in my power. “His duel?”--Dhurmer has run away into the country. One really can’t run after him. “The review?”--Bercail is in charge of it. “The things he had left at Passavant’s?”--This is the thorniest point. I had to admit that George had been unable to get possession of them; but I have promised to go and fetch them myself to-morrow. He is afraid, from what I can gather, that Passavant may keep them as a hostage; inadmissable for a single moment!