“But do you not understand; you great booby,” she said, “that I hate him just because he married me, because he bought me, in fact; because everything that he says and does, everything that he thinks, acts on my nerves?  He exasperates me every moment by his stupidity, which you call his kindness; by his dullness, which you call his confidence, and then, above all, because he is my husband, instead of you.  I feel him between us, although he does not interfere with us much.  And then—–­and then!  No, it is, after all, too idiotic of him not to guess anything!  I wish he would, at any rate, be a little jealous.  There are moments when I feel inclined to say to him:  ’Do you not see, you stupid creature, that Paul is my lover?’

“It is quite incomprehensible that you cannot understand how hateful he is to me, how he irritates me.  You always seem to like him, and you shake hands with him cordially.  Men are very extraordinary at times.”

“One must know how to dissimulate, my dear.”

“It is no question of dissimulation, but of feeling.  One might think that, when you men deceive one another, you like each other better on that account, while we women hate a man from the moment that we have betrayed him.”

“I do not see why one should hate an excellent fellow because one is friendly with his wife.”

“You do not see it?  You do not see it?  You all of you are wanting in refinement of feeling.  However, that is one of those things which one feels and cannot express.  And then, moreover, one ought not.  No, you would not understand; it is quite useless!  You men have no delicacy of feeling.”

And smiling, with the gentle contempt of an impure woman, she put both her hands on his shoulders and held up her lips to him.  He stooped down and clasped her closely in his arms, and their lips met.  And as they stood in front of the mantel mirror, another couple exactly like them embraced behind the clock.

They had heard nothing, neither the noise of the key nor the creaking of the door, but suddenly Henriette, with a loud cry, pushed Limousin away with both her arms, and they saw Parent looking at them, livid with rage, without his shoes on and his hat over his forehead.  He looked at each, one after the other, with a quick glance of his eyes and without moving his head.  He appeared beside himself.  Then, without saying a word, he threw himself on Limousin, seized him as if he were going to strangle him, and flung him into the opposite corner of the room so violently that the other lost his balance, and, beating the air with his hand, struck his head violently against the wall.

When Henriette saw that her husband was going to murder her lover, she threw herself on Parent, seized him by the neck, and digging her ten delicate, rosy fingers into his neck, she squeezed him so tightly, with all the vigor of a desperate woman, that the blood spurted out under her nails, and she bit his shoulder, as if she wished to tear it with her teeth.  Parent, half-strangled and choking, loosened his hold on Limousin, in order to shake off his wife, who was hanging to his neck.  Putting his arms round her waist, he flung her also to the other end of the drawing-room.