Lise was too intelligent not to guess, from the embarrassment of the old man, that he knew what had happened between her husband and herself. With a glance she thanked him for his discretion, and some minutes later, when Marthe was gone, she hastened to say:
"I don't know what you have heard, but anything you can have been told is less than the truth. Monsieur Meyrin has betrayed me so vilely that I will not forgive him. My love for him is dead. As long as he pleases we will live under the same roof, but as strangers to one another. A woman of my stamp can forget neither a humiliation nor an outrage. Don't speak to me of him, I beg you. There are only you and Marthe left to love me."
Too much moved to speak a word, Dumesnil pressed a respectful and tender kiss on the feverish hand that the poor betrayed woman stretched out to him.
"And soon, too," she went on, "I shall have only you and my daughter, for in a few months, perhaps in a few weeks, Madame Daubrel will leave France to go to her husband in America."
"Her husband! Why, I thought they were separated by a decree?"
"It is so; and moreover, the separation was pronounced against her; but for eight years she has so bravely expiated her fault that Monsieur Daubrel is disposed to forgive all. Marthe has told me a fact I did not know, that the separation lasts only as long as the man and wife wish. It is revocable at their choice, and is annulled by the simple fact of their voluntary reunion, without the intervention of a judge or the accomplishment of any formality."
"That seems but right," said Dumesnil.
"Yes," said Mme. Meyrin, bitterly, "a deceived husband has the right, if he pardons his wife, to open his house to her again, to give back his children to her. He needs not to authorize her to bear his name anew, since she has not ceased to bear it. By a single kiss all is wiped out. In the case of a divorce, on the contrary, the one woman in the world that the outraged husband can not take to his arms is she that has betrayed him. His union with her would be illegal, irregular; the children he might have by her would be bastards. Ah, my friend, how unhappy am I, and what a punishment mine is."
Lise had buried her face in her hands and was weeping.
The old artist dared not try to console her, and had no thought of defending Paul, who had made no real attempt at reconciliation with his wife, though a week had passed since the drama of the Boulevard de Clichy.