The atmosphere of pleasure and merry-making which had so revolted her a moment before pursued her to her own house.  It was too much, after all the rest!  She rebelled; and as Risler saluted her, affectionately and with deep respect as always, her face assumed an expression of intense disgust, and she passed without speaking to him, without seeing the amazement that opened his great, honest eyes.

From that moment her course was determined.  Wrath, a wrath born of uprightness and sense of justice, guided her actions.  She barely took time to kiss her child’s rosy cheeks before running to her mother’s room.

“Come, mamma, dress yourself quickly.  We are going away.  We are going away.”

The old lady rose slowly from the armchair in which she was sitting, busily engaged in cleaning her watch-chain by inserting a pin between every two links with infinite care.

“Come, come, hurry.  Get your things ready.”

Her voice trembled, and the poor monomaniac’s room seemed a horrible place to her, all glistening as it was with the cleanliness that had gradually become a mania.  She had reached one of those fateful moments when the loss of one illusion causes you to lose them all, enables you to look to the very depths of human misery.  The realization of her complete isolation, between her half-mad mother, her faithless husband, her too young child, came upon her for the first time; but it served only to strengthen her in her resolution.

In a moment the whole household was busily engaged in making preparations for this abrupt, unexpected departure.  Claire hurried the bewildered servants, and dressed her mother and the child, who laughed merrily amid all the excitement.  She was in haste to go before Georges’ return, so that he might find the cradle empty and the house deserted.  Where should she go?  She did not know as yet.  Perhaps to her aunt at Orleans, perhaps to Savigny, no matter where.  What she must do first of all was-go, fly from that atmosphere of treachery and falsehood.

At that moment she was in her bedroom, packing a trunk, making a pile of her effects—­a heartrending occupation.  Every object that she touched set in motion whole worlds of thoughts, of memories.  There is so much of ourselves in anything that we use.  At times the odor of a sachet-bag, the pattern of a bit of lace, were enough to bring tears to her eyes.  Suddenly she heard a heavy footstep in the salon, the door of which was partly open; then there was a slight cough, as if to let her know that some one was there.  She supposed that it was Risler:  for no one else had the right to enter her apartments so unceremoniously.  The idea of having to endure the presence of that hypocritical face, that false smile, was so distasteful to her that she rushed to close the door.

“I am not at home to any one.”

The door resisted her efforts, and Sigismond’s square head appeared in the opening.