When we were left alone I took Marie to task. We argued and stormed till daylight. Since she had had more wine than was good for her, she lost her head and confessed things which I had never even dreamed of.
Beside myself with anger, I repeated all my indictments, all my suspicions, and added a new charge, in which I did not really believe myself.
"And this mysterious illness, these headaches from which I suffer...."
"What! You blame me for that too!"
I had not meant what she insinuated; I had merely referred to the symptoms of cyanide poisoning which I had observed in myself.
All of a sudden a reminiscence flashed into my mind; the thought of something which at the time had seemed too improbable that it had left no permanent trace in my memory....
My suspicion was strengthened when I remembered a certain epithet used in an anonymous letter which I had received a short time after Marie's divorce. The letter referred to her as "the prostitute of Södertälje."
What did it mean? I had made inquiries which had come to nothing. Was I on the point of making a fresh discovery?
When the Baron, Marie's first husband, made her acquaintance at Södertälje, she was half and half engaged to a young officer, a man with admittedly bad health. Poor Gustav had played the part of a greenhorn. That accounted for the warm gratitude which she felt for him even after the divorce; she had confessed at the time that he had delivered her from dangers ... what dangers she had not mentioned.
But "the prostitute of Södertälje"? I reflected ... the retired life which the young couple led, without friends, without society; they had been ostracised by the class to which they belonged.