feeling."

And smiling, with the gentle contempt of an impure woman, she put both
her hands on his shoulders and held up her lips to him. He stooped down
and clasped her closely in his arms, and their lips met. And as they
stood in front of the mantel mirror, another couple exactly like them
embraced behind the clock.

They had heard nothing, neither the noise of the key nor the creaking of
the door, but suddenly Henriette, with a loud cry, pushed Limousin away
with both her arms, and they saw Parent looking at them, livid with rage,
without his shoes on and his hat over his forehead. He looked at each,
one after the other, with a quick glance of his eyes and without moving
his head. He appeared beside himself. Then, without saying a word, he
threw himself on Limousin, seized him as if he were going to strangle
him, and flung him into the opposite corner of the room so violently that
the other lost his balance, and, beating the air with his hand, struck
his head violently against the wall.

When Henriette saw that her husband was going to murder her lover, she
threw herself on Parent, seized him by the neck, and digging her ten
delicate, rosy fingers into his neck, she squeezed him so tightly, with
all the vigor of a desperate woman, that the blood spurted out under her
nails, and she bit his shoulder, as if she wished to tear it with her
teeth. Parent, half-strangled and choking, loosened his hold on Limousin,
in order to shake off his wife, who was hanging to his neck. Putting his
arms round her waist, he flung her also to the other end of the
drawing-room.

Then, as his passion was short-lived, like that of most good-tempered