Nothing certain at the first approach, because of the modern confusion and personal reclassification, but fallen rather than parvenu, belonging at least to those who cultivate a relative leisure in an avowed independence. As for certain other problems which puzzled him, he would amuse himself in resolving them gradually, at her home, with the aid of subtle questions, for he meant to accept her invitation and would go to see her. Such a minute revery denoted a certain possession. Entragues did not yet suspect, or perhaps did not wish to condescend to admit to himself that the agreeable and feminine form of mystery acted on his imagination more than on his curiosity. Sixtine was graceful and her contours corresponded with the harmony requisite to evoke the word of beauty. Blond her hair, and a golden green, her eyes; violent the mouth and exquisitely white, her teeth! Ah! the violent mouth broke the harmony, a cold esthetician would have said, but, and this was the proof that Hubert already was a prey to desire, he loved its destructive violence, seeing it in but a more assured promise of pleasure. Just then Entragues gave such a sharp start that the gamblers close to him held the dice-box sus-about to make. The dice rattled in the copper box pended in air, and suppressed the bets they were and Entragues reflected on his nerves. "It was because of the ambiguity, that was the cause, my soul! The ambiguity threw the poison." "Oh! was he going to take as a serious confession idle words playfully uttered on the wings of a causerie. This time, was it not really the old malady of chimerical fancies? He smiled at himself, and almost grew out of patience. Ah! the thing was not to accuse her because of a confession, not to reveal himself as devoid of criticism as a public accuser, but not to deny her criminal potentiality. What a doll full of bran instead of blood, seamed with threads instead of nerves, is a woman incapable of crime! As well say that she is incapable of passion! Our cowardly civilization, itself, absolves the bloody consequences of love, sparing such women the futile expiation of an inevitable act. The equivocation he had read on Sixtine's face was the mark of election, the sign of possible passion, the proof that she was a woman." This deduction reassured Entragues. Henceforth, instead of trembling before the word crime, he would have to qualify it. A preliminary distinction would have spared him the start which had frightened the dice players. Now he willingly accepted a Sixtine who was a neighbor to crime, and even a criminal Sixtine. In the latter case it meant, for example, that she loved, that she was deceived, that she had poisoned the deceiver. Ah! there are luckless poisoned ones whose fate may trouble sensibilities after the deed. But if, instead of defending herself, Sixtine had died, what sort of person would the assassin have been?