“Do you see?” she said to Lissac suddenly.  “I detest these walls!”

She pointed to the gilded ceilings with an angry gesture.

“Since I entered here, my life has come to a close!—­It is that, that which has taken him from me!—­Ah! this society, this politics, these meannesses, this life exposed to every one and everything, to temptation and to fall, I am entirely sick of, I am disgusted with.  Let me be snatched from it, let me be taken away!  Everywhere here, one might say, there is an atmosphere of lying!”

“Do you hear?  She laughs, she is happy!  She!  And I, ah!  I!”

She had risen to her feet, suddenly recovering all her energy, as if stirred by the air of a Hungarian dance, whose strains dimly reached them from the distant, warm salons, where Marianne was disporting her beauty—­

“Ah!  I hate this hotel, the noise and the women!” said Adrienne.  “This horde ranged about the buffet, this salon turned into a restaurant, the false salutations, the commonplace protestations,—­this society, all this society, I detest it!—­I will have no more of it!—­It seems to me that it all is mocking me, and that its smiles are only for that courtesan!—­But if I had driven her out?—­Who brought her?”

“Her uncle and Monsieur de Rosas!”

“Monsieur de Rosas?”

“Who marries her!”

Adrienne nervously uttered a loud, harsh laugh, as painful as if it were caused by a spasm.

“Who marries her!  Then these creatures are married?—­Ah! they are married—­They are honored, too, are they not?  And because they are more easy of approach, they are thought more beautiful and more agreeable than those who are merely honest wives?  Ah! it is too silly!—­Rosas!  I took him for a man of sense!—­If I were to tell him myself that she is my husband’s mistress, what would the duke answer?”

“He would not believe you, and you would not do that, madame!” said Lissac.

“Why?”

“Because it would be an act of cowardice, and because you are the best, the noblest of women!”

Instinctively he drew near her, lowering his voice, embracing with his glance that fine, charming beauty, that grief heightened by a burning brilliancy.

She raised her fine, clear eyes to Lissac, whose look troubled her, and said: 

“And how have these served me?—­Kindness, trickery!—­Trickery, chastity!—­Ask all these men!  All of them will go to Mademoiselle Kayser and not to me!”

“To you, madame,” murmured Guy, “all that there is of devotion and earnestness, yes, all of the tenderest and the truest will go to you as respectful homage.”

“Respect?—­Yes, respect to us!—­And with it goes the home!  But to her!  Ah! to her, love!  And what if I wish to be loved myself?”

“Loved by him!” said Lissac in a low tone, as if he did not know what he said; and his hands instinctively sought Adrienne’s.  They trembled.