Having now fallen from the sphere of illusion to that of reality, Madame de Bergenheim was wounded at every step.  A bitter feeling of discouragement overwhelmed her, as she thought of the impossibility of happiness to which a deplorable fatality condemned her.  Marriage and love struggled for existence, both powerless to conquer, and qualified only to cause each other’s death.  Marriage made love a crime; love made marriage a torture.  She could only choose between two abysses:  shame in her love, despair in her virtue.

The hours passed rapidly in these sad and gloomy meditations; the clock marked the hour of midnight.  Madame de Bergenheim thought it time to try to sleep; but, instead of ringing for her maid, she decided to go to the library herself and get a book, thinking that perhaps it might aid her in going to sleep.  As she opened the door leading into the closet adjoining her parlor, she saw by the light of the candle which she held in her hand something which shone like a precious stone lying upon the floor.  At first she thought it might be one of her rings, but as she stooped to pick it up she saw her error.  It was a ruby pin mounted in enamelled gold.  She recognized it, at the very first glance, as belonging to M. de Gerfaut.

She picked up the pin and returned to the parlor.  She exhausted in imagination a thousand conjectures in order to explain the presence of this object in such a place.  Octave must have entered it or he could not have left this sign of his presence; it meant that he could enter her room at his will; what he had done once, he could certainly do again!  The terror which this thought gave her dissipated like a dash of cold water all her former intoxicating thoughts; for, like the majority of women, she had more courage in theory than in action.  A moment before, she had invoked Octave’s image and seated it lovingly by her side.

When she believed this realization possible, all she thought of was to prevent it.  She was sure that her lover never had entered the closet through the parlor, as he never had been in this part of the house farther than the little drawing-room.  Suddenly a thought of the little corridor door struck her; she remembered that this door was not usually locked because the one from the library was always closed; she knew that Octave had a key to the latter, and she readily understood how he had reached her apartment.  Mustering up all her courage through excessive fear, she returned to the closet, hurried down the stairs, and pushed the bolt.  She then returned to the parlor and fell upon the divan, completely exhausted by her expedition.