not love them? Oh! You have behaved abominably towards me. All the
affection of my heart I have bestowed upon my children, and that you
know. I am for them a father of the olden time, as I was for you a
husband of one of the families of old, for by instinct I have remained a
natural man, a man of former days. Yes, I will confess it, you have made
me terribly jealous, because you are a woman of another race, of another
soul, with other requirements. Oh! I shall never forget the things that
you told me, but from that day, I troubled myself no more about you. I
did not kill you, because then I should have had no means on earth of
ever discovering which of our ... of your children is not mine. I have
waited, but I have suffered more than you would believe, for I can no
longer venture to love them, except, perhaps, the two eldest; I no
longer venture to look at them, to call them to me, to kiss them; I
cannot take them onto my knee without asking myself: 'Can it be this
one?' I have been correct in my behavior towards you for six years, and
even kind and complaisant; tell me the truth, and I swear that I will do
nothing unkind."

He thought, in spite of the darkness of the carriage, that he could
perceive that she was moved, and feeling certain that she was going to
speak at last, he said: "I beg you, I beseech you to tell me...." "I
have been more guilty than you think, perhaps," she replied; "but I
could no longer endure that life of continual pregnancy, and I had only
one means of driving you from my bed. I lied before God, and I lied,
with my hand raised to my children's head, for I have never wronged
you."

He seized her arm in the darkness, and squeezing it as he had done on
that terrible day of their drive in the Bois de Boulogne, he stammered:
"Is that true?" "It is true." But he, in terrible grief, said with a