course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed
between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced? And then,
when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma--in
that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with such
kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion. Kisses of that kind
were worth nothing. Quite the contrary! Could she kiss her father now
without a pang? Her father! He had gone wholly over to the side of that
other in this affair. She had seen him in one moment turn against
herself. No!--no one was left her!.... If she could only lay her head
in Modeste's lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the
nursery! But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she
was no longer a baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her.
She could hardly breathe. Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the glass
which reflected her own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate. She put the
pity for herself into a long, long, fervent kiss, which seemed to say:
"Yes, I am all alone--alone forever." Then, in a spirit of revenge, she
opened what seemed a safety-valve, preventing her from giving way to any
other emotion.

She rushed for a little box which she had converted into a sort of
reliquary. She took out of it the half-burned cigarette, the old glove,
the withered violets, and a visiting-card with his name, on which three
unimportant lines had been written. She insulted these keepsakes, she
tore them with her nails, she trampled them underfoot, she reduced them
to fragments; she left nothing whatever of them, except a pile of shreds,
which at last she set fire to. She had a feeling as if she were employed
in executing two great culprits, who deserved cruel tortures at her
hands; and, with them, she slew now and forever the foolish fancy she had
called her love. By a strange association of ideas, the famous
composition, so praised by M. Regis, came back to her memory, and she