Marillac, who had been drinking tea ever since rising, dared not present his face, which showed the effects of his debauch of the night before, to the mistress of the house, whose exacting and aristocratic austerity he very much feared.  He pretended to be ill, in order to delay the moment when he should be forced to make his appearance.  Madame de Bergenheim did not leave her aunt, and thus avoided being alone with Octave—­who, on account of these different complications, might have spent a continual tete-a-tete with her had she been so inclined.  Christian’s absence, instead of being a signal of deliverance for the lovers, seemed to have created a new misunderstanding, for Clemence felt that it would be a mean action to abuse the liberty her husband’s departure gave her.  She was thus very reserved during the day, when she felt that there were more facilities for yielding, but, in the evening, when alone in her apartment, this fictitious prudery disappeared.  She spent the entire evening lying upon the divan in the little boudoir, dreaming of Octave, talking to him as if he could reply, putting into practice again that capitulation of conscience which permits our mind to wander on the brink of guilt, provided actions are strictly correct.

After a while this exaltation fell by degrees.  When struggling earnestly, she had regarded Octave as an enemy; but, since she had gone to him as one passes over to the enemy, and, in her heart, had taken part with the lover against the husband, her courage failed her as she thought of this, and she fell, weak, guilty, and vanquished before the combat.

When she had played with her passion, she had given Christian little thought; she had felt it childish to bring her husband into an amusement that she believed perfectly harmless; then, when she wished to break her plaything, and found it made of iron and turning more and more into a tyrannical yoke, she called to her aid the conjugal divinities, but in too faint a voice to be heard.  Now the situation had changed again.  Christian was no longer the insignificant ally that the virtuous wife had condemned, through self-conceit, to ignorant neutrality; he was the husband, in the hostile and fearful acceptation of the word.  This man whom she had wronged would always have law on his side.

Religion sometimes takes pity on a wayward wife, but society is always ready to condemn her.  She was his own, fastened to him by indissoluble bonds.  He had marked her with his name like a thing of his own; he held the threads of her life in his hands; he was the dispenser of her fortune, the judge of her actions, and the master of their fireside.  She had no dignity except through him.  If he should withdraw his support for a single day, she would fall from her position without any human power being able to rescue her.  Society closes its doors to the outcast wife, and adds to the husband’s sentence another penalty still more scathing.