With marvelous fidelity she went over the slightest events of the day, to which by a constant effort of willpower, she had seemed so indifferent.  First, she saw Gerfaut with his face covered with blood, and the thought of the terrible sensation which this sight caused her made her heart throb violently.  She then recalled him as she next saw him, in the drawing-room by her husband’s side, seated in the very chair that she had left but a moment before.  This trifling circumstance impressed her; she saw in this a proof of sympathetic understanding, a sort of gift of second sight which Octave possessed, and which in her eyes was so formidable a weapon.  According to her ideas, he must have suspected that this was her own favorite chair and have seized it for that reason, just as he would have loved to take her in his arms.

For the first time, Clemence had seen together the man to whom she belonged and the man whom she regarded somewhat as her property.  For, by one of those arrangements with their consciences of which women alone possess the secret, she had managed to reason like this:  “Since I am certain always to belong to Monsieur de Bergenheim only, Octave can certainly belong to me.”  An heterodoxical syllogism, whose two premises she reconciled with an inconceivable subtlety.  A feeling of shame had made her dread this meeting, which the most hardened coquette could never witness without embarrassment.  A woman, between her husband and her lover, is like a plant one sprinkles with ice-cold water while a ray of sunlight is trying to comfort it.  The sombre and jealous, or even tranquil and unsuspecting, face of a husband has a wonderful power of repression.  One is embarrassed to love under the glance of an eye that darts flashes as bright as steel; and a calm, kindly look is more terrible yet, for all jealousy seems tyrannical, and tyranny leads to revolt; but a confiding husband is like a victim strangled in his sleep, and inspires, by his very calmness, the most poignant remorse.

The meeting of these two men naturally led Clemence to a comparison which could but be to Christian’s advantage.  Gerfaut had nothing remarkable about him save an intelligent, intensely clever air; there was a thoughtful look in his eyes and an archness in his smile, but his irregular features showed no mark of beauty; his face wore an habitually tired expression, peculiar to those people who have lived a great deal in a short time, and it made him look older than Christian, although he was really several years younger.  The latter, on the contrary, owed to his strong constitution, fortified by country life, an appearance of blooming youth that enhanced his noble regularity of features.