ask your advice.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

About your husband?

MME. DE SALLUS [_seriously_]

Yes, I am not laughing, or rather I do not laugh any more. [_In lighter
tone_.] Then you are not jealous of my husband? And yet you know he is
the only man who has authority over me.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

It is just because he has authority that I am not jealous. A woman's
heart gives nothing to the man who has authority.

MME. DE SALLUS

My dear, a husband's right is a positive thing; it is a title-deed that
he can lock up--just as my husband has for more than two years--but it
is also one that he can use at any given moment, as lately he has seemed
inclined to do.

JACQUES DE RANDOL [_astonished_]

You tell me that your husband--

MME. DE SALLUS