It was genuine resignation.  It seemed to Risler as if he were stealing something in taking the money for such an unheard-of luxury as a carriage; however, he ended by yielding to Georges’s persistent representations, thinking as he did so: 

“This will make Sidonie very happy!”

The poor fellow had no suspicion that Sidonie herself, a month before, had selected at Binder’s the coupe which Georges insisted upon giving her, and which was to be charged to expense account in order not to alarm the husband.

Honest Risler was so plainly created to be deceived.  His inborn uprightness, the implicit confidence in men and things, which was the foundation of his transparent nature, had been intensified of late by preoccupation resulting from his pursuit of the Risler Press, an invention destined to revolutionize the wall-paper industry and representing in his eyes his contribution to the partnership assets.  When he laid aside his drawings and left his little work-room on the first floor, his face invariably wore the absorbed look of the man who has his life on one side, his anxieties on another.  What a delight it was to him, therefore, to find his home always tranquil, his wife always in good humor, becomingly dressed and smiling.

Without undertaking to explain the change to himself, he recognized that for some time past the “little one” had not been as before in her treatment of him.  She allowed him to resume his old habits:  the pipe at dessert, the little nap after dinner, the appointments at the brewery with Chebe and Delobelle.  Their apartments also were transformed, embellished.

A grand piano by a famous maker made its appearance in the salon in place of the old one, and Madame Dobson, the singing-teacher, came no longer twice a week, but every day, music-roll in hand.

Of a curious type was that young woman of American extraction, with hair of an acid blond, like lemon-pulp, over a bold forehead and metallic blue eyes.  As her husband would not allow her to go on the stage, she gave lessons, and sang in some bourgeois salons.  As a result of living in the artificial world of compositions for voice and piano, she had contracted a species of sentimental frenzy.

She was romance itself.  In her mouth the words “love” and “passion” seemed to have eighty syllables, she uttered them with so much expression.  Oh, expression!  That was what Mistress Dobson placed before everything, and what she tried, and tried in vain, to impart to her pupil.

‘Ay Chiquita,’ upon which Paris fed for several seasons, was then at the height of its popularity.  Sidonie studied it conscientiously, and all the morning she could be heard singing: 

          “On dit que tu te maries,
          Tu sais que j’en puis mourir.”

          [They say that thou’rt to marry
          Thou know’st that I may die.]