It was a beautiful picture of contented country life.

“Look, Mdlle. Sophie,” said I drawing her attention to the scene. “Would a little place like that, with a man who had the honor of being beloved by you, suffice for your ambition?”

“Who told you that I had ambition, Réné?”

“I ask you, do you think that you could be happy under those circumstances?”

She looked at me.

“You see, then, that I am now miserable?”

“You told me so in a letter, when I was staying at Varennes, eight months ago.”

“And have you not forgotten what I wrote to you so long as eight months ago?”

I drew a little portfolio from my pocket, and out of it I took a little scrap of paper, on which was written, in her hand—