“I love Adrienne sincerely!” replied Vaudrey eagerly.

“And you deceive her entirely.  That is foolish.  You deserve that Mademoiselle Kayser should have ridiculed, deceived and ruined you irretrievably, and that your name should never be uttered again.  When one has the opportunity to possess a wife like yours, one adores her on bended knees, you understand me, and one doesn’t destroy her true happiness to divert it in favor of the crowd.  And what pleasure!  Jouvenet has had the same dose at a less cost!”

“You abuse the rights of friendship, somewhat,” said Sulpice, rising suddenly.  “I do what pleases me, as it pleases me, and I owe no account to any one, I think!”

He stopped suddenly.  His feet were, as it were, nailed to the floor and his mouth closed.  He seized Guy’s hand and felt his flesh creep, as he saw Adrienne standing pale, and supporting herself against the doorpost, as if she had not the strength to proceed, her eyes wide open, like those of a sick person.

Assuredly, beyond all possible doubt, she had heard everything.

She was there! she heard!

She said nothing, but moved a step forward, upheld by a terrible effort.

Her look was that of a whipped child, of a poor creature terrified and in despair, and expressed not anger but entire collapse.  She was so wan, so sad-looking, that neither Lissac nor Vaudrey dared speak.  A chill silence fell upon these three persons.

While Adrienne approached the table upon which the journals were piled, Guy was the first to force a smile to throw her off the scent; Adrienne stopped him with a gesture that was intended to express that to undeceive her, that is to say, to deceive her afresh, would be a still more cowardly act.  She took from among the journals that which she had just been reading without at first quite understanding it, the one that had been sent to her, underlined as with a venomous nail, and showing to Vaudrey the article that spoke of Sulpicios and Basilea, she said gently in a feeble voice, crushed by this crumbling of her hopes: 

“That is known then, that affair!”

Then she sunk exhausted into the armchair in which Sulpice had been sitting, and her breast heaved with a violent sob that tore it as if it would rend it.

Sulpice looked at Lissac who was standing half-inclined, as in the presence of a misfortune.  He instinctively seized the minister by the shoulder and gently forced him toward Adrienne, saying to him in a whisper, in ill-assured tones: 

“Kiss her then!  One pardons when one loves!”

With a supplicating cry, Vaudrey threw himself on his knees before Adrienne, while Lissac hastily opened the door and left, feeling indeed that he could not say a word and that Vaudrey only could obtain Vaudrey’s pardon.

“I, in my anger,” he said, “he, in his jealousy, have allowed ourselves to get into a passion.  It is stupid.  One should speak lower.”