When he left this man he began to think things over again.  He felt in his soul a strange confusion of contradictory ideas, a sort of interior burning; that mocking, impertinent laugh kept ringing in his ears and seemed to say:  “Why; you are just the same as the others, you fool!” That was indeed bravado, one of those pieces of impudence of which a woman makes use when she dares everything, risks everything, to wound and humiliate the man who has aroused her ire.  This poor man must also be one of those deceived husbands, like so many others.  He had said sadly:  “There are times when she seems to have more confidence and faith in our friends than in me.”  That is how a husband formulated his observations on the particular attentions of his wife for another man.  That was all.  He had seen nothing more.  He was like the rest—­all the rest!

And how strangely Bondel’s own wife had laughed as she said:  “You, too —­you, too.”  How wild and imprudent these creatures are who can arouse such suspicions in the heart for the sole purpose of revenge!

He ran over their whole life since their marriage, reviewed his mental list of their acquaintances, to see whether she had ever appeared to show more confidence in any one else than in himself.  He never had suspected any one, he was so calm, so sure of her, so confident.

But, now he thought of it, she had had a friend, an intimate friend, who for almost a year had dined with them three times a week.  Tancret, good old Tancret, whom he, Bendel, loved as a brother and whom he continued to see on the sly, since his wife, he did not know why, had grown angry at the charming fellow.

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.