Though Marc's heart contracted, he did not interrupt her, for he wished to learn everything. 'Yes,' she resumed, 'unhappily for me I can see things quite plainly. You take more interest in the last of your boys than you do in me. When you are downstairs with the boys, in the classroom, you become impassioned, you pour out your whole soul, you exert yourself to explain the slightest things to them, and laugh and play with them like an elder brother. But directly you come upstairs you get gloomy again; you can think of nothing to say to me, you look ill at ease, like a man who's worried by his wife and tired of her.... Ah! God, God, how unhappy I am!' Again she burst into sobs. Then Marc, making up his mind, gently responded: 'I dared not tell you the cause of my sadness, darling, but if I suffer it is precisely because I find in you all that you reproach me with. You are never with me now. You spend whole days elsewhere, and when you come home you bring with you an air of unreason and death, which ravages our poor home. It is you who no longer speak to me. Your mind is always wandering, deep in some dim dream, even while you are sewing, or serving the meals, or attending to our little Louise. It is you who treat me with indulgent pity, as if I were a guilty man, perhaps one unconscious of his crime; and it is you who will soon have ceased to love me, if you refuse to open your eyes to a little reasonable truth.' But she would not admit it; she interrupted each sentence that came from him with protests full of vehemence and stupefaction: I! I! It is I whom you accuse! I tell you that you no longer love me, and you dare to assert that I am losing my love for you!' Then, casting aside all restraint, revealing the innermost thoughts that haunted her day by day, she continued: 'Ah! how happy are the women whose husbands share their faith! I see some in church who are always accompanied by their husbands. How delightful it must be for husband and wife to place themselves conjointly in the hands of God! Those homes are blessed, they indeed have but one soul, and there is no felicity that heaven does not shower on them!' Marc could not restrain a slight laugh, at once very gentle and distressful. 'So now, my poor wife,' he said, 'you think of trying to convert me?' 'What harm would there be in that?' she answered eagerly. 'Do you imagine I do not love you enough to feel frightful grief at the thought of the deadly peril you are in? You do not believe in future punishment, you brave the wrath of heaven; but for my part I pray heaven every day to enlighten you, and I would give--ah! willingly--ten years of my life to be able to open your eyes, and save you from the terrible catastrophes which threaten you. Ah! if you would only love me, and listen to me, and follow me to the land of eternal delight!'