What better illustration could I present than the one I have just given?  My mistress was ready to set out and I had but to say the word.  Why did I delay?  What would have been the result if I had started at once on our trip?  Nothing but a moment of apprehension that would have been forgotten after travelling three days.  When with me, she had no thought but of me; why should I care to solve a mystery that did not threaten my happiness?

She would have consented, and that would have been the end of it.  A kiss on her lips and all would be well; instead of that, see what I did.

One evening when Smith had dined with us, I retired at an early hour and left them together.  As I closed my door I heard Brigitte order some tea.  In the morning I happened to approach her table, and, sitting beside the teapot, I saw but one cup.  No one had been in that room before me that morning, so the servant could not have carried away anything that had been used the night before.  I searched everywhere for a second cup but could find none.

“Did Smith stay late?” I asked of Brigitte.

“He left about midnight.”

“Did you retire alone or did you call some one to assist you?”

“I retired alone; every one in the house was asleep.”

I continued my search and my hands trembled.  In what burlesque comedy is there a jealous lover so stupid as to inquire what has become of a cup?  Why seek to discover whether Smith and Madame Pierson had drunk from the same cup?  What a brilliant idea that!

Nevertheless I found the cup and I burst into laughter, and threw it on the floor with such violence that it broke into a thousand pieces.  I ground the pieces under my feet.

Brigitte looked at me without saying a word.  During the two succeeding days she treated me with a coldness that had something of contempt in it, and I saw that she treated Smith with more deference and kindness than usual.  She called him Henri and smiled on him sweetly.

“I feel that the air would do me good,” she said after dinner; “shall we go to the opera, Octave?  I would enjoy walking that far.”

“No, I will stay here; go without me.”  She took Smith’s arm and went out.  I remained alone all evening; I had paper before me, and was trying to collect my thoughts in order to write, but in vain.

As a lonely lover draws from his bosom a letter from his mistress, and loses himself in delightful revery, thus I shut myself up in solitude and yielded to the sweet allurement of doubt.  Before me were the two empty seats which Brigitte and Smith had just occupied; I scrutinized them anxiously as if they could tell me something.  I revolved in my mind all the things I had heard and seen; from time to time I went to the door and cast my eyes over our trunks which had been piled against the wall for a month; I opened them and examined the contents so carefully packed away by those delicate little hands; I listened to the sound of passing carriages; the slightest noise made me tremble.  I spread out on the table our map of Europe, and there, in the very presence of all my hopes, in that room where I had conceived and had so nearly realized them, I abandoned myself to the most frightful presentiments.