I understood, then, the wound I had given, but instead of asking her pardon, I said nothing. To me nothing seemed too sumptuous and elaborate for her, while her one desire was to pass unnoticed. She “set no store” by success: she wished only to please me. But must she not please the whole world, to please me? As to the clothes, she had her way more than I, and I had to be content with a lace robe that suited marvellously her air of candour. All the time the fittings and appraising looks of the tailors, the insulting physical evaluations as of professional buyers, positively affronted her. Again and again she turned toward me eyes that besought mercy like the tender eyes of a hunted doe! But I held to my conquest with an unpitying tenacity. When she had tried on the skirt and waist, that brought out and moulded her body under the vapory lightness of the material, leaving no outline unseen, and displaying the bare expanse of her throat, she was ashamed at the sight of herself in the mirror. “Is it possible,” she protested, “that you can wish me to appear like this?” “Why not?” said I. “You are beautiful.” “But every one will see me,” she objected. It began to seem laughable to me, her idea of reserving her beauty for me alone. The evening upon which we made our first appearance in the drawing-room of Madame de Saunois I felt a curious diminution in my proprietary satisfaction. My too long absence had allowed people to recover from their concern with me, and become indifferent. Paris avenges herself upon those who scorn her. Pierre Ducal was there, informing every one of my marriage. I thought I heard whispered as we passed: “The daughter of his superintendent.” When one is conscious of ill-will one is prompt to imagine hostile remarks, and it seemed to me that every one there was spying jealously upon my wife. The sharp contrast of her youth and bloom with the maturer charms of the other women made instant enemies of them, enemies fully accoutred in the art of feminine war. There were young girls there crowned with name and fortune any one of whom I might have married. Not that I had any regret, but I committed the indelicacy of remembering the advantages I had let slip. There was indeed one woman there, not a stranger to me, whose presence should have been very painful to me, since I especially watched for her opinion of my wife and hoped it would be favourable. Such is the host of petty infamies a man can harbour in his heart when he surrenders himself to vanity. At my wedding in the Sleeping Woods it was the presence of Pierre Ducal that had been the cause of my noticing the cut of my bride’s wedding gown. To-night Raymonde was in faultless toilette, though timidity and reserve and half fright, made her seem full of awkwardness. Her modest embarrassment under the steady gaze of so many people became ridiculous constraint, and instead of encouraging her I too became ill at ease and caught some of her discomfort.