"Ah, if she were thinking it, really! But she spoke impetuously--she had had much to try her. She had only just left Jacques and----" "Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu, what I owe to that man!" he vociferated. "What everlasting afflictions, his telling me of his accursed pansies! First, it annihilated my prospects, and now it rends me from my wife and children. I shall stipulate that they live with me for half the year; but what of the other half, while they are being taught that the father who loves them so dearly is a contemptible man, disgusting to their mother?" He rocked to and fro. "Also, how am I to make a home for them when they come? I leave the villa to Elise; I cannot afford two establishments--above all, now that I have lost the production by Martime, and may never see a son from work that has occupied me for a year. Malediction on that pot of pansies!" "Now listen!" He had been to the last degree unreasonable, but he was suffering, and I have a good heart. "I guarantee that this separation will not last a week. I shall have a talk with Elise." "With Elise? It is I who make the separation," he objected, with a piteous attempt at dignity. "And further, I have no hostility against you, but it is partly through your own talks with Elise that she is lost to me. Ah, yes!" I had stared at him, stupefied. "I understand that you said to her, at the time, that I was guilty of 'injustice' towards Jacques. I do not say you traduced me with any vicious motive, but, unquestionably, your irresponsible chatter paved the way to the catastrophe that wrecks my life." My turpitude notwithstanding, he wept in my room till 3 a.m., keeping me up. And he, and Elise, too, proved very distressing to me during the days that followed. She was equally headstrong. I was surprised at her. "You mean well, but pray say no more; it is inevitable," she answered me tremulously. "As for that stupid affair of Jacques and Blanche, I daresay I may have misjudged Henri. They don't understand. As a business man, no doubt he did what was really best in their own interests." I perceived that her commiseration for them had much decreased since it involved her in domestic strife. "But his conduct towards _me_--! I have done with him. I am not a fool, to imagine an honourable man would desert his wife for a reason like that. A performance. He did not even forget his razor strop. Let him go to her! He was not an angel--no writing man is--but I thought he loved me, and I never complained. Because I admired him, because he was the one man in the world to me. Behind the curtain it hung, not even in sight, and he did not forget it when he packed! Brute! You heard him say he could 'find comprehension elsewhere.' She will not keep his linen in such order as _I_ have done, that I'll swear. To pretend it was just because I believed what Jacques and Blanche had said! I believe nothing that they say. I detest them. Oh, they have made a pretty mess of my life, those two!"