M. de Nueil, in amazement, broke the seal and read:—­

“MADAME,—­If I could cease to love you, to take the chances of becoming an ordinary man which you hold out to me, you must admit that I should thoroughly deserve my fate.  No, I shall not do as you bid me; the oath of fidelity which I swear to you shall only be absolved by death.  Ah! take my life, unless indeed you do not fear to carry a remorse all through your own . . .”

It was his own letter, written to the Marquise as she set out for Geneva nine years before.  At the foot of it Claire de Bourgogne had written, “Monsieur, you are free.”

M. de Nueil went to his mother at Manerville.  In less than three weeks he married Mlle. Stephanie de la Rodiere.

If this commonplace story of real life ended here, it would be to some extent a sort of mystification.  The first man you meet can tell you a better.  But the widespread fame of the catastrophe (for, unhappily, this is a true tale), and all the memories which it may arouse in those who have known the divine delights of infinite passion, and lost them by their own deed, or through the cruelty of fate,—­these things may perhaps shelter the story from criticism.

Mme. la Marquise de Beauseant never left Valleroy after her parting from M. de Nueil.  After his marriage she still continued to live there, for some inscrutable woman’s reason; any woman is at liberty to assign the one which most appeals to her.  Claire de Bourgogne lived in such complete retirement that none of the servants, save Jacques and her own woman, ever saw their mistress.  She required absolute silence all about her, and only left her room to go to the chapel on the Valleroy estate, whither a neighboring priest came to say mass every morning.

The Comte de Nueil sank a few days after his marriage into something like conjugal apathy, which might be interpreted to mean happiness or unhappiness equally easily.

“My son is perfectly happy,” his mother said everywhere.

Mme. Gaston de Nueil, like a great many young women, was a rather colorless character, sweet and passive.  A month after her marriage she had expectations of becoming a mother.  All this was quite in accordance with ordinary views.  M. de Nueil was very nice to her; but two months after his separation from the Marquise, he grew notably thoughtful and abstracted.  But then he always had been serious, his mother said.

After seven months of this tepid happiness, a little thing occurred, one of those seemingly small matters which imply such great development of thought and such widespread trouble of the soul, that only the bare fact can be recorded; the interpretation of it must be left to the fancy of each individual mind.  One day, when M. de Nueil had been shooting over the lands of Manerville and Valleroy, he crossed Mme. de Beauseant’s park on his way home, summoned Jacques, and when the man came, asked him, “Whether the Marquise was as fond of game as ever?”