herself what would happen next?

Her first resolve was to break with the painter and never to see him
again. Hardly had she formed this resolution before a thousand reasons
sprang up as quickly to combat it. How could she explain such a break?
What should she say to her husband? Would not the suspected truth be
whispered, then spread abroad?

Would it not be better, for the sake of appearances, to act, with
Olivier Bertin himself, the hypocritical comedy of indifference and
forgetfulness, to show him that she had effaced that moment from her
memory and from her life?

But could she do it? Would she have the audacity to appear to recollect
nothing, to assume a look of indignant astonishment in saying: "What
would you with me?" to the man with whom she had actually shared that
swift and ardent emotion?

She reflected a long time, and decided that any other solution was
impossible.

She would go to him courageously the next day, and make him understand
as soon as she could what she desired him to do. She must not use a
word, an allusion, a look, that could recall to him that moment of
shame.

After he had suffered--for assuredly he would have his share of
suffering, as a loyal and upright man--he would remain in future that
which he had been up to the present.