"'I am glad you are taking it so sensibly,' she rejoined. 'Yes, your wife is one of the young lovers.'
"'And the other, madam.'
"'Why, who else should it be but M. Gabriel?'
"I did not speak for a few moments. The shock was so severe that I required time to recover some semblance of composure.
"'My mind is much relieved,' I said. 'There is not the slightest foundation for scandal, and I trust that this interview will put an effectual stop to it. My wife and M. Gabriel have not been long acquainted. They met each other for the first time in this house.'
"'Ah,' cried the lady very vivaciously, 'you want to deceive me now; but it is nonsense. Your wife and M. Gabriel have known each other for many years. They were once affianced. Had you not stepped in, there is no knowing what might have occurred. It is much better as it is--I am sure you think so. What can be worse for a young and beautiful creature than to marry a poor and struggling artist? M. Gabriel is very talented, but he is very poor. By the time he is a middle-aged man he may have made his way in the world, and then his little romance will be forgotten--quite forgotten. I dare say you can look back to the time when you were as young as he is, and can recall somebody you were madly in love with, but of whom you never think, except by the merest chance. These things are so common, you see. And now don't let us talk any more about it.'
"I had no desire to exchange another word with the lady on the subject; I allowed her to rest in the belief that I had been acquainted with the whole affair, and did not wish it to get about. She promised me never to speak of it again to her friends in any injurious way, said it was a real pleasure to see what a sensible view I took of the matter, and our interview was at an end.
"I had learnt all. At length, at length my eyes were opened, and the perfidy which had been practised towards me was revealed. All was explained. My wife's constant coldness, her insensibility to the affectionate advances I had made towards her, her pleasure at meeting her lover--the unworthy picture lay before my sight. There was no longer any opportunity for self-deception. Had I not recognised and acknowledged the full extent of the treason, I should have become base in my own esteem. It was not that they had been lovers--that knowledge in itself would have been hard to bear--but that they should have concealed it from me, that they should have met in my presence as strangers, that they should have tacitly agreed to trick me!--for hours I could not think with calmness upon these aspects of the misery which had been forced upon me. For she, my wife, was in the first instance responsible for our marriage; she could have refused me. I was in utter ignorance of a love which, during all these years, had been burning in her heart, and making her life and mine a torture. Had she been honest, had she been true, she would have said to me: 'I love another; how, then, can I accept the love you offer me, and how can you hope for a return? If circumstances compel me to marry you there must be no concealment, no treason. You must take me as I am, and never, never make my coldness the cause of reproach or unhappiness.' Yes, this much she might have said to me when I offered her my name--a name upon which there had hitherto been no stain and no dishonour. I should not have married her; I should have acted as a father towards her; I should have conducted her to the arms of her lover, and into their lives and mine would not have crept this infamy, this blight, this shame which even death cannot efface.
"Of such a nature were my thoughts during the day.
"Then came the resolve to be sure before I took action in the matter. The evidence of my own senses should convince me that in my own house my wife and her lover were playing a base part, were systematically deceiving me and laughing at me.