The carriage drove them into the courtyard of their mansion, and when it had drawn up in front of the steps, the Count got down first, as usual, and offered his wife his arm, to help her up.  And then, as soon as they had reached the first floor, he said:  “Can I speak to you for a few moments longer?” And she replied:  “I am quite willing.”

They went into a small drawing-room, while a footman in some surprise, lit the wax candles.  As soon as he had left the room and they were alone, he continued:  “How am I to know the truth?  I have begged you a thousand times to speak, but you have remained dumb, impenetrable, inflexible, inexorable, and now to-day, you tell me that you have been lying.  For six years you have actually allowed me to believe such a thing!  No, you are lying now; I do not know why, but out of pity for me, perhaps!”

She replied in a sincere and convincing manner:  “If I had not done so, I should have had four more children in the last six years!” And he exclaimed:  “Can a mother speak like that?” “Oh!” she replied, “I do not at all feel that I am the mother of children who have never been born.  It is enough for me to be the mother of those that I have, and to love them with all my heart.  I am, we are women who belong to the civilized world, Monsieur, and we are no longer, and we refuse to be, mere females who restock the earth.”

She got up, but he seized her hands.  “Only one word, Gabrielle.  Tell me the truth!” “I have just told you.  I have never dishonored you.”

He looked her full in the face, and how beautiful she was, with her gray eyes, like the cold sky.  In her dark hair dress, on that opaque night of black hair, there shone the diamond coronet, like a milky way.  Then he suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that this grand creature was not merely a being destined to perpetuate his race, but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated desires which have been accumulating in us for centuries, but which have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object, and which have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly seen and intangible beauty.  There are some women like that, who blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry and aesthetic charm which surrounds woman, that living statue who brightens our life, like sensual fevers and immaterial appetites.

Her husband remained standing before her, stupefied at that tardy and obscure discovery, confusedly hitting on the cause of his former jealousy, and understanding it all very imperfectly; and at last he said:  “I believe you, for I feel at this moment that you are not lying, and formerly, I really thought that you were.”  She put out her hand to him:  “We are friends, then?” He took her hand and kissed it, and replied:  “We are friends.  Thank you, Gabrielle.”

Then he went out, still looking at her, and surprised that she was still so beautiful, and feeling a strange emotion arising in him, which was, perhaps, more formidable than antique and simple love.