his wife, his dear wife Marianne, awaiting him, all smiles and trustfulness, in the fresh quietude of the country.  Could he deceive her? . . .  Then all at once he again rushed off towards the railway station, in fear lest he should lose his train.  He was determined that he would listen to no further promptings, that he would cast no further glance upon glowing, dissolute Paris, and he reached the station just in time to climb into a car.  The train started and he journeyed on, leaning out of his compartment and offering his face to the cool night breeze in order that it might calm and carry off the evil fever that had possessed him.

The night was moonless, but studded with such pure and such glowing stars that the country could be seen spreading far away beneath a soft bluish radiance.  Already at twenty minutes past eleven Marianne found herself on the little bridge crossing the Yeuse, midway between Chantebled, the pavilion where she and her husband lived, and the station of Janville.  The children were fast asleep; she had left them in the charge of Zoe, the servant, who sat knitting beside a lamp, the light of which could be seen from afar, showing like a bright spark amid the black line of the woods.

Whenever Mathieu returned home by the seven o’clock train, as was his wont, Marianne came to meet him at the bridge.  Occasionally she brought her two eldest boys, the twins, with her, though their little legs moved but slowly on the return journey when, in retracing their steps, a thousand yards or more, they had to climb a rather steep hillside.  And that evening, late though the hour was, Marianne had yielded to that pleasant habit of hers, enjoying the delight of thus going forward through the lovely night to meet the man she worshipped.  She never went further than the bridge which arched over the narrow river.  She seated herself on its broad, low parapet, as on some rustic bench, and thence she overlooked the whole plain as far as the houses of Janville, before which passed the railway line.  And from afar she could see her husband approaching along the road which wound between the cornfields.

That evening she took her usual seat under the broad velvety sky spangled with gold.  And with a movement which bespoke her solicitude she turned towards the bright little light shining on the verge of the sombre woods, a light telling of the quietude of the room in which it burnt, the servant’s tranquil vigil, and the happy slumber of the children in the adjoining chamber.  Then Marianne let her gaze wander all around her, over the great estate of Chantebled, belonging to the Seguins.  The dilapidated pavilion stood at the extreme edge of the woods whose copses, intersected by patches of heath, spread over a lofty plateau to the distant farms of Mareuil and Lillebonne.  But that was not all, for to the west of the plateau lay more than two hundred and fifty acres of land, a marshy expanse where pools stagnated amid brushwood,