Daily some pure, honest woman, like her, acquires the proof of the
treason of a husband whom she has not ceased to love. Ordinarily, the
indisputable proof is preceded by a long period of suspicion. The
faithless one neglects his hearth. A change takes place in his daily
habits. Various hints reveal to the outraged wife the trace of a rival,
which woman's jealousy distinguishes with a scent as certain as that of a
dog which finds a stranger in the house. And, finally, although there is
in the transition from doubt to certainty a laceration of the heart, it
is at least the laceration of a heart prepared. That preparation, that
adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud had been deprived
of. The care taken by Madame Steno to strengthen the friendship between
her and Alba had suppressed the slightest signs. Boleslas had no need to
change his domestic life in order to see his mistress at his convenience
and in an intimacy entertained, provoked, by his wife herself. The wife,
too, had been totally, absolutely deceived. She had assisted in her
husband's adultery with one of those illusions so complete that it seemed
improbable to the indifferent and to strangers. The awakening from such
illusions is the most terrible. That man whom society considered a
complaisant husband, that woman who seemed so indulgent a wife, suddenly
find that they have committed a murder or a suicide, to the great
astonishment of the world which, even then, hesitates to recognize in
that access of folly the proof, the blow, more formidable, more
instantaneous in its ravages, than those of love-sudden disillusion.
When the disaster is not interrupted by acts of violence, it causes an
irreparable destruction of the youthfulness of the soul, it is the idea
instilled in us forever that all can betray, since we have been betrayed
in that manner. It is for years, for life, sometimes, that powerlessness
to be affected, to hope, to believe, which caused Maud Gorka to remain,
on that afternoon, leaning against the pedestal of a column, watching the
rain fall, instead of ascending to the Basilica, where the confessional