At the entrance of the prince, Lise rose from the couch she was seated on, and bowed without speaking.
The nobleman whose name she had stained looked at her fixedly for some moments, then, signing to her to be seated again, he sunk into a chair opposite to her and said in firm, grave tones:
"Madame, although to do so does not seem quite indispensable, for I find you far calmer than you ought to be, I wish to confirm what I wrote to you last night. I do not come to reproach you, though you have spoiled my life; I do not come to make a scene, though the Russian law, like the French, gives me every right over you—even to kill you if I found you in the act of adultery—which it would not have been difficult for me to do, as you must know. That act of justice, according to the law, would be merely a pardonable crime. But have no fear. If for a moment, when the news of your misconduct came upon me yonder like a thunder-bolt, I thought of punishing you, it was because the memory of the past aroused my anger. Now, my heart and mind have grown calm again, I come to insist upon the only means of putting an end to the scandal of the life you are living."
At these words, and not before, the princess raised her eyes. Up to then she had hidden her face in her hands, so as not to show the humiliation that her husband's tone made her feel.
Pierre Olsdorf went on:
"I am so sure of your submission that I will not attempt to point out the dangers you would run if you opposed my will in the least degree. After having Monsieur Paul Meyrin for your lover in Russia, you came to him here in Paris because you were enceinte by him."
At these words, so plain and precise, Lise Olsdorf could not master a movement of real affright. She perhaps would have attempted a denial, but the prince stopped her with a severe look and said:
"Don't try to deceive me. It would be an infamy added to a fault already so great. I speak as I do because I have not the shadow of a doubt; if I had it would be a frightful torture. I have compared one thing with another, I have grouped together facts which at the time seemed to me to have no importance, last summer at Pampeln, in my château so hospitably open. Besides, the little esteem that I yet feel for you would not let me suppose for a moment that, while bearing in your womb a legitimate child, you would leave the father of this child, in a state when the vilest creature has some shame, to give yourself to a lover."
Deeply affected, the adulterous wife again lowered her head.
The prince continued: