Its obscure beginning indicated sudden anguish and black suspicion:  “Therese, Therese, why did you give yourself to me if you were not giving yourself to me wholly?  How does it serve me that you have deceived me, now that I know what I did not wish to know?”

She stopped; a veil came over her eyes.  She thought: 

“We were so happy a moment ago.  What has happened?  And I was so pleased at his joy, when it had already gone; it would be better not to write, since letters show only vanished sentiments and effaced ideas.”

She read further.  And seeing that he was full of jealousy, she felt discouraged.

“If I have not proved to him that I love him with all my strength, that I love him with all there is in me, how am I ever to persuade him of it?”

And she was impatient to discover the cause of his folly.  Jacques told it.  While taking breakfast in the Rue Royale he had met a former companion who had just returned from the seaside.  They had talked together; chance made that man speak of the Countess Martin, whom he knew.  And at once, interrupting the narration, Jacques exclaimed:  “Therese, Therese, why did you lie to me, since I was sure to learn some day that of which I alone was ignorant?  But the error is mine more than yours.  The letter which you put into the San Michele post-box, your meeting at the Florence station, would have enlightened me if I had not obstinately retained my illusions and disdained evidence.

“I did not know; I wished to remain ignorant.  I did not ask you anything, from fear that you might not be able to continue to lie; I was prudent; and it has happened that an idiot suddenly, brutally, at a restaurant table, has opened my eyes and forced me to know.  Oh, now that I know, now that I can not doubt, it seems to me that to doubt would be delicious!  He gave the name—­the name which I heard at Fiesole from Miss Bell, and he added:  ‘Everybody knows about that.’

“So you loved him.  You love him still!  He is near you, doubtless.  He goes every year to the Dinard races.  I have been told so.  I see him.  I see everything.  If you knew the images that worry me, you would say, ’He is mad,’ and you would take pity on me.  Oh, how I should like to forget you and everything!  But I can not.  You know very well I can not forget you except with you.  I see you incessantly with him.  It is torture.  I thought I was unfortunate that night on the banks of the Arno.  But I did not know then what it is to suffer.  To-day I know.”

As she finished reading that letter, Therese thought:  “A word thrown haphazard has placed him in that condition, a word has made him despairing and mad.”  She tried to think who might be the wretched fellow who could have talked in that way.  She suspected two or three young men whom Le Menil had introduced to her once, warning her not to trust them.  And with one of the white and cold fits of anger she had inherited from her father she said to herself: