She waited for the return of her husband's affection, saying daily to herself, "To-morrow it may come,"-- treating her happiness as though it were an absent friend.
During this stage of her secret distress, she conceived her last child.
Horrible crisis, which revealed a future of anguish! In the midst of her husband's abstractions love showed itself on this occasion an abstraction even greater than the rest.

Her woman's pride, hurt for the first time, made her sound the depths of the unknown abyss which separated her from the Claes of earlier days.

From that time Balthazar's condition grew rapidly worse.

The man formerly so wrapped up in his domestic happiness, who played for hours with his children on the parlor carpet or round the garden paths, who seemed able to exist only in the light of his Pepita's dark eyes, did not even perceive her pregnancy, seldom shared the family life, and even forgot his own.
The longer Madame Claes postponed inquiring into the cause of his preoccupation the less she dared to do so.

At the very idea, her blood ran cold and her voice grew faint.