“I have been through the boulevards to-day.”

Two or three times a year her husband took her to the theatre.  These were events the remembrance of which never grew dim; they provided subjects of conversation for long afterward.

Sometimes three months afterward she would suddenly burst into laughter, and exclaim: 

“Do you remember that actor dressed up as a general, who crowed like a cock?”

Her friends were limited to two families related to her own.  She spoke of them as “the Martinets” and “the Michelins.”

Her husband lived as he pleased, coming home when it suited him —­sometimes not until dawn—­alleging business, but not putting himself out overmuch to account for his movements, well aware that no suspicion would ever enter his wife’s guileless soul.

But one morning she received an anonymous letter.

She was thunderstruck—­too simple-minded to understand the infamy of unsigned information and to despise the letter, the writer of which declared himself inspired by interest in her happiness, hatred of evil, and love of truth.

This missive told her that her husband had had for two years past, a sweetheart, a young widow named Madame Rosset, with whom he spent all his evenings.

Bertha knew neither how to dissemble her grief nor how to spy on her husband.  When he came in for lunch she threw the letter down before him, burst into tears, and fled to her room.

He had time to take in the situation and to prepare his reply.  He knocked at his wife’s door.  She opened it at once, but dared not look at him.  He smiled, sat down, drew her to his knee, and in a tone of light raillery began: 

“My dear child, as a matter of fact, I have a friend named Madame Rosset, whom I have known for the last ten years, and of whom I have a very high opinion.  I may add that I know scores of other people whose names I have never mentioned to you, seeing that you do not care for society, or fresh acquaintances, or functions of any sort.  But, to make short work of such vile accusations as this, I want you to put on your things after lunch, and we’ll go together and call on this lady, who will very soon become a friend of yours, too, I am quite sure.”

She embraced her husband warmly, and, moved by that feminine spirit of curiosity which will not be lulled once it is aroused, consented to go and see this unknown widow, of whom she was, in spite of everything, just the least bit jealous.  She felt instinctively that to know a danger is to be already armed against it.

She entered a small, tastefully furnished flat on the fourth floor of an attractive house.  After waiting five minutes in a drawing-room rendered somewhat dark by its many curtains and hangings, a door opened, and a very dark, short, rather plump young woman appeared, surprised and smiling.

George introduced them: 

“My wife—­Madame Julie Rosset.”