He stopped to think, looking over the past with anxious eyes.  Then he grew angry at himself for harboring this shameful insinuation of the defiant, jealous, bad ego which lives in all of us.  He blamed and accused himself when he remembered the visits and the demeanor of this friend whom his wife had dismissed for no apparent reason.  But, suddenly, other memories returned to him, similar ruptures due to the vindictive character of Madame Bondel, who never pardoned a slight.  Then he laughed frankly at himself for the doubts which he had nursed; and he remembered the angry looks of his wife as he would tell her, when he returned at night:  “I saw good old Tancret, and he wished to be remembered to you,” and he reassured himself.

She would invariably answer:  “When you see that gentleman you can tell him that I can very well dispense with his remembrances.”  With what an irritated, angry look she would say these words!  How well one could feel that she did not and would not forgive—­and he had suspected her even for a second?  Such foolishness!

But why did she grow so angry?  She never had given the exact reason for this quarrel.  She still bore him that grudge!  Was it?—­But no—­no—­and Bondel declared that he was lowering himself by even thinking of such things.

Yes, he was undoubtedly lowering himself, but he could not help thinking of it, and he asked himself with terror if this thought which had entered into his mind had not come to stop, if he did not carry in his heart the seed of fearful torment.  He knew himself; he was a man to think over his doubts, as formerly he would ruminate over his commercial operations, for days and nights, endlessly weighing the pros and the cons.

He was already becoming excited; he was walking fast and losing his calmness.  A thought cannot be downed.  It is intangible, cannot be caught, cannot be killed.

Suddenly a plan occurred to him; it was bold, so bold that at first he doubted whether he would carry it out.

Each time that he met Tancret, his friend would ask for news of Madame Bondel, and Bondel would answer:  “She is still a little angry.”  Nothing more.  Good Lord!  What a fool he had been!  Perhaps!

Well, he would take the train to Paris, go to Tancret, and bring him back with him that very evening, assuring him that his wife’s mysterious anger had disappeared.  But how would Madame Bondel act?  What a scene there would be!  What anger! what scandal!  What of it?—­that would be revenge!  When she should come face to face with him, unexpectedly, he certainly ought to be able to read the truth in their expressions.

He immediately went to the station, bought his ticket, got into the car, and as soon as he felt him self being carried away by the train, he felt a fear, a kind of dizziness, at what he was going to do.  In order not to weaken, back down, and return alone, he tried not to think of the matter any longer, to bring his mind to bear on other affairs, to do what he had decided to do with a blind resolution; and he began to hum tunes from operettas and music halls until he reached Paris.