The unhappy man!  He had cherished the thought of still visiting his mistress, but he found there an unlooked-for being, a new creature, who was unmistakably determined, in spite of her cunning charm, and she spoke to him in stupefying, ironical language.

“You would have me go mad, Marianne?”

“Why! what an idea!  The phrase is decidedly romantic.—­You should dispense with the blue in love as well as the exaggeration in politics.”

“Marianne,” Vaudrey said abruptly, “do you know that for your sake I have destroyed my home and mortally wounded my wife?”

“Well,” she replied, “did I ask you to do so?  I pleased you, you pleased me; that was quite enough.  I desire no one’s death and if you have allowed everything to be known, it is because you have acted indiscreetly or stupidly!  But I who do not wish to mortally wound,” she emphasized these words with a smile—­“my husband, I expect him to suspect nothing, know nothing, and as you are incapable of possessing enough intelligence not to play Antony with him, let us stop here.  Adieu, then, my dear Vaudrey!”

She extended her hand to him, that soft hand that imparted an electrical influence when he touched it.

“Well, what!—­You are pouting?”

“I love you,” he replied distractedly.  “I love you, you hear, and I wish to keep you!”

“Ah! no, no! no roughness,” she said with a laugh, as he, taking a seat near her, tried to draw her to him in his arms.

“To keep you, although belonging to another,” whispered Vaudrey slowly.

“For whom do you take me?” said Marianne, proudly drawing herself up.  “If I have a husband, I require that he be respected.  A man who gives his name to a woman is clearly entitled to be dealt with truthfully!”

“Then,” stammered Sulpice, “what?—­Must we never see each other again?”

“We shall recognize each other.”

“You drive me away?”

“As a lover!”

“Ah! stay,” said Vaudrey, as, pale with anger, he walked across the room, “you are a miserable woman, a courtesan, you understand, a courtesan!—­Guy has told me everything!  You gave yourself to Jouvenet to avenge yourself on Lissac, you made a tool of me and you are making a sport of Rosas who is marrying you!—­What have I not done for you!—­I have ruined myself! yes, ruined myself!”

“My dear,” interrupted Marianne, “see the difference between a gentleman like Monsieur de Rosas and a little bourgeois like yourself.  The duke might have ruined himself for me but he would never have reproached me.  One never speaks of money to a woman.  You are a very honest, domestic man and you were born to worship your wife!  You should stick to her!  You are not made of the stuff of a true-born lover.  What you have just told me is the remark of a loon!”

“Ah! if I had only known you!”

“Or anything!  But I am better than you, you see.  I was better advised than you.  The bill of exchange that you owe to the Dujarrier or to Gochard,—­whichever you like—­it inconveniences you, I know!”