At ten o'clock Véronique entered to say that Monsieur Lazare's room was ready. But when they had reached the first floor, and she wanted to instal him in the former guest-chamber, which had been subsequently fitted up for the occupation of himself and his wife, he flew into a tantrum. 'You're quite mistaken,' said he, 'if you suppose that I am going to sleep there! I'm going up to the top of the house to my old iron bedstead.' Véronique began to grumble and growl. Why couldn't he sleep there? The bed had been got ready for him, and, surely, he wasn't going to give her the trouble of preparing another. 'Very well,' he said, 'I will sleep in an easy-chair.' While Véronique angrily tore off the sheets and carried them up to the top floor, Pauline experienced a sudden delight which impelled her to throw her arms round her cousin's neck, in an outburst of the old chummish feeling of their youth, as she wished him good-night. He was occupying his big room once more, and he was so close to her that for a long time she could hear him pacing about, as though brooding over the recollections which were keeping her awake also. It was only the next morning that Lazare began to take Pauline into his confidence. Even then he made no clear statement; she had to guess what she could from a few short sentences which he let slip in the course of conversation. By-and-by she took courage and questioned him with an expression of affectionate concern. Were he and Louise still getting on as happily as ever? He replied in the affirmative, but complained about certain little domestic disagreements and other trifling matters which had led to quarrels. Without having come to a definite rupture, they were suffering from the perpetual jarring of two highly-strung temperaments, which were incapable of equilibrium either in joy or sorrow. There existed between them a sort of unconfessed bitterness, as though they were surprised and angry at having mistaken each other, at having discovered each other's real feelings so soon, after all the passionate love of the first days. For a moment Pauline thought she could discover that it was pecuniary troubles that had embittered them; but in this she was mistaken, for their income of ten thousand francs a year had remained almost undiminished. Lazare had simply become disgusted with business, just as he had previously grown disgusted with music and medicine and industrial enterprise; and on this subject he launched out in strong language. Never, he said, never had he come across such a stupid, rotten sphere as that of the financial world. He would prefer anything, the dulness of country life and the mediocrity of small means, to perpetual worries about money, the brain-softening tangle of figures. He had just retired from the Insurance Company, he said, and he was going to try what he could do as a play-writer when he returned to Paris in the following winter. His drama would avenge him;