presence made of her an accomplice. But at the same time she was a prey,
as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite
to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical
need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's
sister, who continued:

"Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own
hand? Yes," she continued, with cruel irony, "she loves correspondence,
our fortunate rival. Justice must be rendered her that she may make no
more avowals. She writes as she feels. It seems that the successor was
jealous of his predecessor.... See, is this a proof this time?".... And,
after having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar with them,
she handed one of those papers to Maud, who had not the courage to avert
her eyes. What she saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of
anguish. She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much
mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was
ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka.
Countess Steno's grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a
heroine in her passions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the
usual pettiness of flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a
new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to
women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse. She had not
essayed to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken off for him,
and it was upon one of those phrases, in which she spoke of it openly,
that Madame Gorka's eyes fell:

"You will be pleased with me," she wrote, "and I shall no longer see in
your dear blue eyes which I kiss, as I love them, that gleam of mistrust
which troubles me. I have stopped the correspondence with Gorka. If you
require it, I will even break with Maud, notwithstanding the reason you