“These young girls are so senseless.  The notion of marriage puts them in such an incomprehensible state!  Look at my daughter.  She chatters like a magpie and skips about like a kid.  She has two glow-worms under her eyelids!  As to Jeanne, that’s another affair; she has the matrimonial melancholy, and has the air of a young victim.  Leave them alone; it will all come right.  But you must admit that the gayety of the one is at least as irritating as the languor of the other!”

Cayrol, somewhat reassured by this explanation, and thinking, like her, that it was the uncertainties of marriage which were troubling Jeanne, no longer attached any importance to her sad appearance.  Micheline and Serge isolated themselves completely.  They fled to the garden as soon as any one ventured into the drawing room, to interrupt their tete-a-tete.  If visitors came to the garden they took refuge in the conservatory.

This manoeuvre pleased Serge, because he always felt uncomfortable in Jeanne’s presence.  Mademoiselle de Cernay had a peculiar wrinkle on her brow whenever she saw Micheline passing before her hanging on the arm of the Prince, which tormented him.  They were obliged to meet at table in the evening, for Serge and Cayrol dined at the Rue Saint-Dominique.  The Prince talked in whispers to Micheline, but every now and then he was obliged to speak to Jeanne.  These were painful moments to Serge.  He was always in dread of some outburst, knowing her ardent and passionate nature.  Thus, before Jeanne, he made Micheline behave in a less demonstrative manner.  Mademoiselle Desvarennes was proud of this reserve, and thought it was tact and good breeding on the part of the Prince, without doubting that what she thought reserve in the man of the world was the prudence of an anxious lover.

Jeanne endured the tortures of Hades.  Too proud to say anything after the explanation she had had with Serge, too much smitten to bear calmly the sight of her rival’s happiness, she saw draw near with deep horror the moment when she would belong to the man whom she had determined to marry although she did not love him.  She once thought of breaking off the engagement; as she could not belong to the man whom she adored, at least she could belong to herself.  But the thought of the struggle she would have to sustain with those who surrounded her, stopped her.  What would she do at Madame Desvarennes’s?  She would have to witness the happiness of Micheline and Serge.  She would rather leave the house.

With Cayrol at least she could go away; she would be free, and perhaps the esteem which she would surely have for her husband would do instead of love.  Sisterly or filial love, in fact the least affection, would satisfy the poor man, who was willing to accept anything from Jeanne.  And she would not have that group of Serge and Micheline before her eyes, always walking round the lawn and disappearing arm in arm down the narrow walks.  She would not have the continual murmur of their love-making in her ears, a murmur broken by the sound of kisses when they reached shady corners.