“I murmured:  ‘Your husband is spying on us.’

“She seemed dumbfounded and asked:  ‘My husband?’

“’Yes, he has been watching us for some time: 

“‘Nonsense!  Are you sure?’

“‘Very sure.’

“’How strange!  He is usually extraordinarily pleasant to all my. friends.’

“‘Perhaps he guessed that I love you!’

“’Nonsense!  You are not the first one to pay attention to me.  Every woman who is a little in view drags behind her a herd of admirers.’

“‘Yes.  But I love you deeply.’

“‘Admitting that that is true, does a husband ever guess those things?’

“‘Then he is not jealous?’

“‘No-no!’

“She thought for an instant and then continued:  ’No.  I do not think that I ever noticed any jealousy on his part.’

“‘Has he never-watched you?’

“‘No.  As I said, he is always agreeable to my friends.’

“From that day my courting became much more assiduous.  The woman did not please me any more than before, but the probable jealousy of her husband tempted me greatly.

“As for her, I judged her coolly and clearly.  She had a certain worldly charm, due to a quick, gay, amiable and superficial mind, but no real, deep attraction.  She was, as I have already said, an excitable little being, all on the surface, with rather a showy elegance.  How can I explain myself?  She was an ornament, not a home.

“One day, after taking dinner with her, her husband said to me, just as I was leaving:  ‘My dear friend’ (he now called me ’friend’), ’we soon leave for the country.  It is a great pleasure to my wife and myself to entertain people whom we like.  We would be very pleased to have you spend a month with us.  It would be very nice of you to do so.’

“I was dumbfounded, but I accepted.

“A month later I arrived at their estate of Vertcresson, in Touraine.  They were waiting for me at the station, five miles from the chateau.  There were three of them, she, the husband and a gentleman unknown to me, the Comte de Morterade, to whom I was introduced.  He appeared to be delighted to make my acquaintance, and the strangest ideas passed through my mind while we trotted along the beautiful road between two hedges.  I was saying to myself:  ’Let’s see, what can this mean?  Here is a husband who cannot doubt that his wife and I are on more than friendly terms, and yet he invites me to his house, receives me like an old friend and seems to say:  “Go ahead, my friend, the road is clear!"’

“Then I am introduced to a very pleasant gentleman, who seems already to have settled down in the house, and—­and who is perhaps trying to get out of it, and who seems as pleased at my arrival as the husband himself.

“Is it some former admirer who wishes to retire?  One might think so.  But, then, would these two men tacitly have come to one of these infamous little agreements so common in society?  And it is proposed to me that I should quietly enter into the pact and carry it out.  All hands and arms are held out to me.  All doors and hearts are open to me.