Ah! if he had been her husband, what a tight rein he would have kept on her!  But he had no power over her and she was not at all backward about telling him so.  Sometimes, too, with the invincible logic that often occurs to the greatest fools, he reflected that, as he was deceiving his friend, perhaps he deserved to be deceived.  In short, his was a wretched life.  He passed his time running about to jewellers and dry-goods dealers, inventing gifts and surprises.  Ah! he knew her well.  He knew that he could pacify her with trinkets, yet not retain his hold upon her, and that, when the day came that she was bored—­

But Sidonie was not bored as yet.  She was living the life that she longed to live; she had all the happiness she could hope to attain.  There was nothing passionate or romantic about her feeling for Georges.  He was like a second husband to her, younger and, above all, richer than the other.  To complete the vulgarization of their liaison, she had summoned her parents to Asnieres, lodged them in a little house in the country, and made of that vain and wilfully blind father and that affectionate, still bewildered mother a halo of respectability of which she felt the necessity as she sank lower and lower.

Everything was shrewdly planned in that perverse little brain, which reflected coolly upon vice; and it seemed to her as if she might continue to live thus in peace, when Frantz Risler suddenly arrived.

Simply from seeing him enter the room, she had realized that her repose was threatened, that an interview of the gravest importance was to take place between them.

Her plan was formed on the instant.  She must at once put it into execution.

The summer-house that they entered contained one large, circular room with four windows, each looking out upon a different landscape; it was furnished for the purposes of summer siestas, for the hot hours when one seeks shelter from the sunlight and the noises of the garden.  A broad, very low divan ran all around the wall.  A small lacquered table, also very low, stood in the middle of the room, covered with odd numbers of society journals.

The hangings were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among bluish reeds—­produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures floating before one’s languid eyes.  The lowered blinds, the matting on the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside, produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets on the shore.

Sidonie sat down as soon as she entered the room, pushing aside her long white skirt, which sank like a mass of snow at the foot of the divan; and with sparkling eyes and a smile playing about her lips, bending her little head slightly, its saucy coquettishness heightened by the bow of ribbon on the side, she waited.

Frantz, pale as death, remained standing, looking about the room.  After a moment he began: