weaknesses and contradictions. Jacqueline noticed that her mother and
those who said that they believed had as much fear of death as though
there had been no faith in them. No: religion was not a strong enough
support.... And in addition there were certain personal experiences,
feelings of revolt and disgust, a tactless confessor who had hurt
her.... She went on practising, but without faith, just as she paid
calls, because she had been well brought up. Religion, like the world,
seemed to her to be utterly empty. Her only stay was the memory of the
dead woman, in which she was wrapped up. She had many grounds for
self-reproach in her treatment of her aunt, whom in her childish
selfishness she had often neglected, while now she called to her in
vain. She idealized her image: and the great example which Marthe had
left upon her mind of a profound life of meditation helped to fill her
with distaste for the life of the world, in which there was no truth or
serious purpose. She saw nothing but its hypocrisy, and those amiable
compromises, which at any other time would have amused her, now revolted
her. She was in a condition of moral hypersensitiveness, and everything
hurt her: her conscience was raw. Her eyes were opened to certain facts
which hitherto had escaped her in her heedlessness.

One afternoon she was in the drawing-room with her mother. Madame
Langeais was receiving a caller,--a fashionable painter, a good-looking,
pompous man, who was often at the house, but not on terms of intimacy.
Jacqueline had a feeling that she was in the way, but that only made her
more determined to stay. Madame Langeais was not very well; she had a
headache, which made her a little dull, or perhaps it was one of those
headache preventives which the ladies of to-day eat like sweets, so that
they have the result of completely emptying their pretty heads, and she
was not very guarded in what she said. In the course of the conversation
she thoughtlessly called her visitor: