But one word of truth you shall hear before I go.

You have been false to your wife, and you have been false to your mistress, but it is only now that I find that you can be false also to your word." She swept him an indignant courtesy, and glided, with head erect, out of the room.
The king sprang from his chair as if he had been stung.

Accustomed as he was to his gentle little wife, and the even gentler La Valliere, such language as this had never before intruded itself upon the royal ears.
It was like a physical blow to him.

He felt stunned, humiliated, bewildered, by so unwonted a sensation.

What odour was this which mingled for the first time with the incense amid which he lived?
And then his whole soul rose up in anger at her, at the woman who had dared to raise her voice against him.