“Bitterness?  I don’t feel any; you are a complete stranger to me; I am only trying to keep up a difficult conversation.”

He was still looking at her, fascinated in spite of her harshness, and he felt seized with a brutal Beside, the desire of the master.

Perceiving that she had hurt his feelings, she said: 

“How old are you now?  I thought you were younger than you look.”

“I am forty-five”; and then he added:  “I forgot to ask after Princesse de Raynes.  Are you still intimate with her?”

She looked at him as if she hated him: 

“Yes, I certainly am.  She is very well, thank you.”

They remained sitting side by side, agitated and irritated.  Suddenly he said: 

“My dear Bertha, I have changed my mind.  You are my wife, and I expect you to come with me to-day.  You have, I think, improved both morally and physically, and I am going to take you back again.  I am your husband, and it is my right to do so.”

She was stupefied, and looked at him, trying to divine his thoughts; but his face was resolute and impenetrable.

“I am very sorry,” she said, “but I have made other engagements.”

“So much the worse for you,” was his reply.  “The law gives me the power, and I mean to use it.”

They were nearing Marseilles, and the train whistled and slackened speed.  The baroness rose, carefully rolled up her wraps, and then, turning to her husband, said: 

“My dear Raymond, do not make a bad use of this tete-a tete which I had carefully prepared.  I wished to take precautions, according to your advice, so that I might have nothing to fear from you or from other people, whatever might happen.  You are going to Nice, are you not?”

“I shall go wherever you go.”

“Not at all; just listen to me, and I am sure that you will leave me in peace.  In a few moments, when we get to the station, you will see the Princesse de Raynes and Comtesse Henriot waiting for me with their husbands.  I wished them to see as, and to know that we had spent the night together in the railway carriage.  Don’t be alarmed; they will tell it everywhere as a most surprising fact.

“I told you just now that I had most carefully followed your advice and saved appearances.  Anything else does not matter, does it?  Well, in order to do so, I wished to be seen with you.  You told me carefully to avoid any scandal, and I am avoiding it, for, I am afraid—­I am afraid—­”

She waited till the train had quite stopped, and as her friends ran up to open the carriage door, she said: 

“I am afraid”—­hesitating—­“that there is another reason—­je suis enceinte.”

The princess stretched out her arms to embrace her,—­and the baroness said, painting to the baron, who was dumb with astonishment, and was trying to get at the truth: 

“You do not recognize Raymond?  He has certainly changed a good deal, and he agreed to come with me so that I might not travel alone.  We take little trips like this occasionally, like good friends who cannot live together.  We are going to separate here; he has had enough of me already.”