However occupied Balthazar Claes might be, he continued for several months cheerful, affectionate, and ready to talk; the change in his character showed itself only by frequent periods of absent-mindedness.  Madame Claes long hoped to hear from her husband himself the nature of the secret employment in which he was engaged; perhaps, she thought, he would reveal it when it developed some useful result; many men are led by pride to conceal the nature of their efforts, and only make them known at the moment of success.  When the day of triumph came, surely domestic happiness would return, more vivid than ever when Balthazar became aware of this chasm in the life of love, which his heart would surely disavow.  Josephine knew her husband well enough to be certain that he would never forgive himself for having made his Pepita less than happy during several months.

She kept silence therefore, and felt a sort of joy in thus suffering by him for him:  her passion had a tinge of that Spanish piety which allows no separation between religion and love, and believes in no sentiment without suffering.  She waited for the return of her husband’s affection, saying daily to herself, “To-morrow it may come,” —­treating her happiness as though it were an absent friend.

During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.  Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish!  In the midst of her husband’s abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an abstraction even greater than the rest.  Her woman’s pride, hurt for the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which separated her from the Claes of earlier days.  From that time Balthazar’s condition grew rapidly worse.  The man formerly so wrapped up in his domestic happiness, who played for hours with his children on the parlor carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the light of his Pepita’s dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family life, and even forgot his own.

The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his preoccupation the less she dared to do so.  At the very idea, her blood ran cold and her voice grew faint.  At last the thought occurred to her that she had ceased to please her husband, and then indeed she was seriously alarmed.  That fear now filled her mind, drove her to despair, then to feverish excitement, and became the text of many an hour of melancholy reverie.  She defended Balthazar at her own expense, calling herself old and ugly; then she imagined a generous though humiliating consideration for her in this secret occupation by which he secured to her a negative fidelity; and she resolved to give him back his independence by allowing one of those unspoken divorces which make the happiness of many a marriage.

Before bidding farewell to conjugal life, Madame Claes made some attempt to read her husband’s heart, and found it closed.  Little by little, she saw him become indifferent to all that he had formerly loved; he neglected his tulips, he cared no longer for his children.  There could be no doubt that he was given over to some passion that was not of the heart, but which, to a woman’s mind, is not less withering.  His love was dormant, not lost:  this might be a consolation, but the misfortune remained the same.