‘I warned you, I quite understood—­’

But he interrupted her with a despairing gesture.  What! was that, then, the end of his long illusion, that dream of eternity which had made him set happiness in a few friendships, formed in childhood, and shared until extreme old age?  Ah! what a wretched band, what a final rending, what a terrible balance-sheet to weep over after that bankruptcy of the human heart!  And he grew astonished on thinking of the friends who had fallen off by the roadside, of the great affections lost on the way, of the others unceasingly changing around himself, in whom he found no change.  His poor Thursdays filled him with pity, so many memories were in mourning, it was the slow death of all that one loves!  Would his wife and himself have to resign themselves to live as in a desert, to cloister themselves in utter hatred of the world?  Ought they rather to throw their doors wide open to a throng of strangers and indifferent folk?  By degrees a certainty dawned in the depths of his grief:  everything ended and nothing began again in life.  He seemed to yield to evidence, and, heaving a big sigh, exclaimed: 

’You were right.  We won’t invite them to dinner again—­they would devour one another.’

As soon as Claude and Christine reached the Place de la Trinite on their way home, the painter let go of his wife’s arm; and, stammering that he had to go somewhere, he begged her to return to the Rue Tourlaque without him.  She had felt him shuddering, and she remained quite scared with surprise and fear.  Somewhere to go at that hour —­past midnight!  Where had he to go, and what for?  He had turned round and was making off, when she overtook him, and, pretending that she was frightened, begged that he would not leave her to climb up to Montmartre alone at that time of night.  This consideration alone brought him back.  He took her arm again; they ascended the Rue Blanche and the Rue Lepic, and at last found themselves in the Rue Tourlaque.  And on reaching their door, he rang the bell, and then again left her.

‘Here you are,’ he said; ‘I’m going.’

He was already hastening away, taking long strides, and gesticulating like a madman.  Without even closing the door which had been opened, she darted off, bent on following him.  In the Rue Lepic she drew near; but for fear of exciting him still more she contented herself with keeping him in sight, walking some thirty yards in the rear, without his knowing that she was behind him.  On reaching the end of the Rue Lepic he went down the Rue Blanche again, and then proceeded by way of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin and the Rue du Dix Decembre as far as the Rue de Richelieu.  When she saw him turn into the last-named thoroughfare, a mortal chill came over her:  he was going towards the Seine; it was the realisation of the frightful fear which kept her of a night awake, full of anguish!  And what could she do, good Lord?  Go with him,