He had lied to her—so devoted, and frank, and loyal. He preferred a girl of the town to the woman who had so freely and completely abandoned herself to him. And this had been going on for months—for months she, the daughter of the Countess Barineff, the ex-Princess Olsdorf, the former queen of Pampeln, the great lady whom the most brilliant noblemen had paid court to—she had been an object of scorn or pity for her husband's boon companions.
This husband, too, his lips still warm with another woman's kisses, had returned to her, seeking her legitimate kisses, and telling her that he loved her. At these thoughts her soul trembled with horror and her body shuddered with disgust.
She had no fixed purpose in going to the Boulevard Clichy either as to what she should do or what she should say. The one purpose in her mind was not to be for a day longer the plaything of a man for whose sake she had sacrificed everything.
From time to time amid these thoughts there rose another, through one of the changes frequent in lofty souls which are slow to believe in evil. What if she had been duped—if this letter were a lie, a calumny? Then, through her tears—tears of love and indignation at one and the same time—she read again the vile lines, and would no longer doubt.
This shameful letter, without a name to it, spoke the truth only too well.
Two or three weeks after this wife's confinement, at the time when he was timidly beginning to initiate some of the reforms advised by his sister-in-law, Paul Meyrin, whose brother artists came to see him less often than formerly, took to visiting their studios. When he was not under the influence of Mme. Frantz's ideas he was ill at ease at home, embarrassed, and ashamed of himself. The gentle obedience Lise showed to his slightest wishes, the pains she took to be nothing more than a middle-class mother of a family, the simplicity of her dress—all caused him a vague remorse; while his vanity, though he did not acknowledge it to himself, made him regret something of the past. As, however, as much through weakness as pride, he dared not recall what he had said, he absented himself from home.
At first it was strange to him to find himself again within the surroundings he had left three years before. He returned to them with the hesitation and surprise that a traveler feels when after a long absence he sees again places the language of which is no longer familiar to him, and the customs have been forgotten. He very soon found the old pleasure in the gossip, the freedom, and the movement of these studios, recalling to him, as they did, a merry and careless time.
Every day he met some former comrade, models he had employed, women who had posed before him. Some of them, indeed, had been his mistresses. He was received everywhere with open arms and heart. Old times were talked over, a jest was made of everybody and everything, time was killed by working a little. At these times Paul Meyrin forgot, for hours together, that he was a husband and a father. He quickly grew enamored again of the easy life he had lived before he went to Russia.
However, after these trespasses, the painter was none the less exact in returning home; indeed, after a day when he had been most forgetful of his home he was commonly so affectionate and attentive to Lise, as though he felt the need of excusing himself to himself, that she had not the shadow of a suspicion.
If things had gone no further, Paul's escapades would have been nothing more than venial sins; but he soon launched out into greater depths. He happened to meet Sarah Lamber one afternoon at the studio of one of his painter friends, Robert Aubrey. She was posing, half nude, for a Phryne, which the tenant of the studio intended sending in to the next exhibition.