If the man who sought to speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung on the skirts of her party, were Tignonville--her lover, who at his own request had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure from Paris--then her plight was a sorry one.

For what woman, wedded as she had been wedded, could think otherwise than indulgently of his persistence?
And yet, lover and husband! What peril, what shame the words had often spelled! At the thought only she trembled and her colour ebbed.

She saw, as one who stands on the brink of a precipice, the depth which yawned before her.

She asked herself, shivering, if she would ever sink to _that_.
All the loyalty of a strong nature, all the virtue of a good woman, revolted against the thought.

True, her husband--husband she must call him--had not deserved her love; but his bizarre magnanimity, the gloomy, disdainful kindness with which he had crowned possession, even the unity of their interests, which he had impressed upon her in so strange a fashion, claimed a return in honour.
To be paid--how?
how?
That was the crux which perplexed, which frightened, which harassed her.