"Poor Sophie! But, tell me, this coolness, or rather this transformation of married lovers to friends, if you choose, was not sudden, was it? It came insensibly and almost without your perceiving it."
"Practically, yes; but how do you know?"
"One more question, Sophie, dear. In the period of your early love, you and you husband were, I am certain of it, very anxious to please each other. Never could a toilet be fresh or pretty enough. You heightened by painstaking and agreeableness every charm you possessed; indeed, your only thought was to please your husband, to captivate him always, and to keep him always in love. Your Charles, no doubt, preferred some delicate perfume, and your beautiful hair, your garments, exhaled that sweet odour, which, in time of absence, materialises, so to speak, the memory of a beloved woman."
"That is true; we adored the odour of the violet and the iris. That perfume always recalls to me the happy days of our past."
"You see plainly, then. As to your husband, I do not doubt, he vied with you in the care and elegance and taste of the most trifling details of his toilet. In short, both of you, ardent and passionate, guarded with strictest attention all the delights of your young love. But, alas! from the bosom of this happiness, so easily, so naturally, issued by degrees habit,—that fatal precursor of familiarity, lack of ceremony, neglect of self, habit!—all the more dangerous because it resembles, even so as to be mistaken for it, a sweet and intimate confidence. So, one says: 'I am sure of being loved, what need of this constant care and painstaking? What are these trifles to true love?' So, my good Sophie, there came a day when, entirely absorbed by your tenderness for your children, you no longer occupied yourself in finding out if your hair were arranged becomingly, in a style suited to your pretty face, if your dress hung well or badly from your graceful waist, if your little foot were coquettishly dressed in the morning. Your husband, on his part, absorbed in his work as you were by the cares of maternity, neglected himself, too. Unconsciously, your eyes grew accustomed to the change, scarcely perceiving it; as in the same way, so to speak, people never see each other grow old when they live continually together. And it is true, dear Sophie, that if at this moment you should evoke, by memory, the care, the elegance, and the charms with which you and your husband surrounded yourselves in the beautiful time of your courtship, you would be startled with surprise in comparing the present with the past."
"It is only too true, Madeleine," replied Sophie, throwing a sad, embarrassed look on her careless attire and disordered hair. "Yes, by degrees I have forgotten the art, or, rather, the desire to please my husband. Alas! it is now too late to repent!"
"Too late!" exclaimed the marquise. "Too late! With your twenty-five years, that attractive face, too late! With that enchanting figure, that magnificent hair, those pearly teeth, those large, tender eyes, that hand of a duchess, and those feet of a child, too late! Let me be your tirewoman for a half-hour, Sophie, and you will see if it is too late to make your husband as passionately in love with you as he ever was."
"Ah, Madeline, you are the only one in the world to give hope to those who have none; nevertheless, the truth of your words frightens me. Alas, alas! You are right. Charles loves me no longer."
"He loves you as much and perhaps even more than in the past, poor foolish child, because you are the wife whose fidelity has been tested, the tender mother of his children; but you are no longer the infatuating mistress of the past, nor has he that tender, passionate love for you he felt in the first days of your wedded bliss. What I say to you, my good Sophie, may be a little harsh, but the good God knows what he has made us. He has created us of immaterial essence. Neither are we all matter, but neither are we all mind. It is true, believe me, that there is something divine in pleasure, but we must guard it, purify it, idealise it. Now, pray pardon this excessive management on my part, as you see that a little appreciation of the sensuous is not too much to awaken a nature benumbed by habit, or else the seductive mistress always has an advantage over the wife; for, after all, Sophie, why should the duties of wife and mother be incompatible with the charms and enticements of the mistress? Why should the father, the husband, not be a charming lover? Yes, my good Sophie, I am going, in a few words, with my usual bluntness, to sum up your position and mine: your husband loves you, but desires you no longer; he does not love me, and he desires me."
Then the marquise, laughing immoderately, added: