“Oh yes!  If I were to die tomorrow, what would become of those two unfortunates?”

His imagination took wing.  He began himself to believe the mother and her.  His voice trembled.  Tears very nearly came to his eyes.

“He is unhappy, my darling is,” she said, raising the curtain and returning, clothed, into the room.  “And that is why he looks so sad, even when he smiles!”

He looked at her.  Surely at that moment her affection was not feigned.  She really clung to him.  Why, oh, why, had she had to have those rages of lust?  If it had not been for those they could probably have been good comrades, sin moderately together, and love each other better than if they wallowed in the sty of the senses.  But no, such a relation was impossible with her, he concluded, seeing those sulphurous eyes, that ravenous, despoiling mouth.

She had sat down in front of his writing table and was playing with a penholder.  “Were you working when I came in?  Where are you in your history of Gilles de Rais?”

“I am getting along, but I am hampered.  To make a good study of the Satanism of the Middle Ages one ought to get really into the environment, or at least fabricate a similar environment, by becoming acquainted with the practitioners of Satanism all about us—­for the psychology is the same, though the operations differ.”  And looking her straight in the eye, thinking the story of the child had softened her, he hazarded all on a cast, “Ah! if your husband would give me the information he has about Canon Docre!”

She stood motionless, but her eyes clouded over.  She did not answer.

“True,” he said, “Chantelouve, suspecting our liaison—­”

She interrupted him.  “My husband has no concern with the relations which may exist between you and me.  He evidently suffers when I go out, as tonight, for he knows where I am going; but I admit no right of control either on his part or mine.  He is free, and I am free, to go wherever we please.  I must keep house for him, watch out for his interests, take care of him, love him like a devoted companion, and that I do, with all my heart.  As to being responsible for my acts, they’re none of his business, no more his than anybody else’s.”

She spoke in a crisp, incisive tone.

“The devil;” said Durtal.  “You certainly reduce the importance of the role of husband.”

“I know that my ideas are not the ideas of the world I live in, and they appear not to be yours.  In my first marriage they were a source of trouble and disaster—­but I have an iron will and I bend the people who love me.  In addition, I despise deceit, so when a few years after marriage I became smitten on a man I quite frankly told my husband and confessed my fault.”

“Dare I ask you in what spirit he received this confidence?”

“He was so grieved that in one night his hair turned white.  He could not bear what he called—­wrongly, I think—­my treason, and he killed himself.”