She knew very well that all she could say would only irritate him. He
asked her whether that was the way she spoke in the Rue Spontini.

She looked at him with sadness.

"Jacques, you have often told me that there were hatred and anger in your
heart against me. You like to make me suffer. I can see it."

With ardent patience, at length, she told him her entire life, the little
that she had put into it; the sadness of the past; and how, since he had
known her, she had lived only through him and in him.

The words fell as limpid as her look. She sat near him. He listened to
her with bitter avidity. Cruel with himself, he wished to know
everything about her last meetings with the other. She reported
faithfully the events of the Great Britain Hotel; but she changed the
scene to the outside, in an alley of the Casino, from fear that the image
of their sad interview in a closed room should irritate her lover. Then
she explained the meeting at the station. She had not wished to cause
despair to a suffering man who was so violent. But since then she had
had no news from him until the day when he spoke to her on the street.
She repeated what she had replied to him. Two days later she had seen
him at the opera, in her box. Certainly, she had not encouraged him to
come. It was the truth.

It was the truth. But the old poison, slowly accumulating in his mind,
burned him. She made the past, the irreparable past, present to him, by
her avowals. He saw images of it which tortured him. He said:

"I do not believe you."