Twenty minutes after, Lisbeth and Crevel reached the house in the Rue Barbet, where Madame Marneffe was awaiting, in mild impatience, the result of a step taken by her commands.  Valerie had in the end fallen a prey to the absorbing love which, once in her life, masters a woman’s heart.  Wenceslas was its object, and, a failure as an artist, he became in Madame Marneffe’s hands a lover so perfect that he was to her what she had been to Baron Hulot.

Valerie was holding a slipper in one hand, and Steinbock clasped the other, while her head rested on his shoulder.  The rambling conversation in which they had been engaged ever since Crevel went out may be ticketed, like certain lengthy literary efforts of our day, “All rights reserved,” for it cannot be reproduced.  This masterpiece of personal poetry naturally brought a regret to the artist’s lips, and he said, not without some bitterness: 

“What a pity it is that I married; for if I had but waited, as Lisbeth told me, I might now have married you.”

“Who but a Pole would wish to make a wife of a devoted mistress?” cried Valerie.  “To change love into duty, and pleasure into a bore.”

“I know you to be so fickle,” replied Steinbock.  “Did I not hear you talking to Lisbeth of that Brazilian, Baron Montes?”

“Do you want to rid me of him?”

“It would be the only way to hinder his seeing you,” said the ex-sculptor.

“Let me tell you, my darling—­for I tell you everything,” said Valerie —­“I was saving him up for a husband.—­The promises I have made to that man!—­Oh, long before I knew you,” said she, in reply to a movement from Wenceslas.  “And those promises, of which he avails himself to plague me, oblige me to get married almost secretly; for if he should hear that I am marrying Crevel, he is the sort of man that —­that would kill me.”

“Oh, as to that!” said Steinbock, with a scornful expression, which conveyed that such a danger was small indeed for a woman beloved by a Pole.

And in the matter of valor there is no brag or bravado in a Pole, so thoroughly and seriously brave are they all.

“And that idiot Crevel,” she went on, “who wants to make a great display and indulge his taste for inexpensive magnificence in honor of the wedding, places me in difficulties from which I see no escape.”

Could Valerie confess to this man, whom she adored, that since the discomfiture of Baron Hulot, this Baron Henri Montes had inherited the privilege of calling on her at all hours of the day or night; and that, notwithstanding her cleverness, she was still puzzled to find a cause of quarrel in which the Brazilian might seem to be solely in the wrong?  She knew the Baron’s almost savage temper—­not unlike Lisbeth’s —­too well not to quake as she thought of this Othello of Rio de Janeiro.

As the carriage drove up, Steinbock released Valerie, for his arm was round her waist, and took up a newspaper, in which he was found absorbed.  Valerie was stitching with elaborate care at the slippers she was working for Crevel.