He appeared fatigued and thin.  She concluded that he was suffering.  She compared his entrances, his manner, his bearing with the attitude of the Marquis, who was also beginning to be attracted by Annette’s grace.  It was not at all the same thing:  Monsieur de Farandal admired her, Olivier Bertin loved!  She believed this at least during her hours of torture; then, in quieter moments she still hoped that she had deceived herself.

Oh, often she could hardly restrain herself from questioning him when she was alone with him, praying, entreating him to speak, to confess all, to hide nothing!  She preferred to know and to weep under certainty than to suffer thus under doubt, not able to read that closed heart, wherein she felt another love was growing.

That heart, which she prized more highly than her life, over which she had watched, and which she had warmed and animated with her love for twelve years, of which she had believed herself sure, which she had hoped was definitely hers, conquered, submissive, passionately devoted for the rest of their lives, behold! now that heart was escaping her by an inconceivable, horrible, and monstrous fatality!  Yes, it had suddenly closed itself, upon a secret.  She could no longer penetrate it by a familiar word, or hide therein her own affection as in a faithful retreat open for herself alone.  What is the use of loving, of giving oneself without reserve, if suddenly he to whom one has offered her whole being, her entire existence, all, everything she had in the world, is to escape thus because another face has pleased him, transforming him in a few days almost into a stranger?

A stranger!  He, Olivier?  He spoke to her, as always, with the same words, the same voice, the same tone.  And yet there was something between them, something inexplicable, intangible, invincible, almost nothing—­that almost nothing that causes a sail to float away when the wind turns.

He was drifting, in fact, drifting away from her a little more each day, by all the glances he cast upon Annette.  He himself did not attempt to see clearly into the depths of his heart.  He felt, indeed, that fermentation of love, that irresistible attraction; but he would not understand, he trusted to events, to the unforeseen chances of life.

He had no longer any other interest than that of his dinners and his evenings between those two women, separated from the gay world by their mourning.  Meeting only indifferent faces at their house—­those of the Corbelles, and Musadieu oftener—­he fancied himself almost alone in the world with them; and as he now seldom saw the Duchess and the Marquis, for whom the morning and noontimes were reserved, he wished to forget them, suspecting that the marriage had been indefinitely postponed.

Besides, Annette never spoke of Monsieur de Farandal before him.  Was this because of a sort of instinctive modesty, or was it perhaps from one of those secret intuitions of the feminine heart which enable them to foretell that of which they are ignorant?