Besides, he had not the least suspicion. Jeanne, like all guilty women,
overwhelmed him with kind attentions, which the good man mistook for
proofs of love. The fatal passion was growing daily stronger in the
young woman's heart, and she would have found it impossible to have given
up her dishonorable happiness with Panine. She felt herself capable of
doing anything to preserve her lover.

Jeanne had already said, "Oh! if we were but free!" And they formed
projects. They would go away to Lake Lugano, and, in a villa hidden by
trees and shrubs, would enjoy the pleasures of being indissolubly united.
The woman was more eager than the man in giving way to these visions of
happiness. She sometimes said, "What hinders us now? Let us go." But
Serge, prudent and discreet, even in the most affectionate moments, led
Jeanne to take a more sensible view. What was the use of a scandal? Did
they not belong to each other?

Then the young woman reproached him for not loving her as much as she
loved him. She was tired of dissimulating; her husband was an object of
horror to her, and she had to tell him untruths and submit to his
caresses which were revolting to her. Serge calmed her with a kiss, and
bade her wait awhile.

Pierre, rendered anxious on hearing that Serge had joined Herzog in his
dangerous financial speculations, had left his mines and had just
arrived. The letters which Micheline addressed to the friend of her
youth, her enforced confidant in trouble, were calm and resigned. Full
of pride, she had carefully hidden from Pierre the cause of her troubles.
He was the last person by whom she would like to be pitied, and her
letters had represented Serge as repentant and full of good feeling.
Marechal, for similar reasons, had kept his friend in the dark. He