Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/499

 to his methods of working; his paper must be cut in a certain way; the pens placed always in the same place; the disorder of his writing-table was to be respected: all this was necessary, and this, the most amiable man in the world, would go into a temper, like a spoilt child, over a stroke too much or too little of a housemaid's feather wand.

Thus, little by little, the lives of these two, who were fond of each other certainly, drifted apart. The worker, more and more absorbed, went his way; the pleasure-seeker, more and more enthralled, followed hers. Karl was pleased at his wife's success; he reposed a blind confidence in her, a husband's confidence, which, on the other hand, was entirely justified. He was content to bestow the luxury she appreciated so well; he smiled with almost paternal indulgence at her costly toilettes, and her perfectly ruinous extravagances. He had no fear for the future: even if a child were born to them—that child, so hoped for at the first, and even yet desired, only less ardently—what of it? He was still young, and capable of even harder toil yet! He felt himself full of life and vigour, and faced the future with undaunted brow and smiling lips.

The intimacy of their first years was almost at an end; life willed it so; but they remained good friends—comrades, rather; lovers by fits and starts. Never did a sharp word interrupt the harmony of their existence; they were looked upon as quite a model pair; nevertheless

Nevertheless, Jeanne more than half acknowledged to herself that they, unwittingly, insensibly, had taken different roads, and that, year by year, these roads had been gently but surely diverging more widely. Absence was no longer a thing to be dreaded; they were glad to be together again, but they could do without each other and feel no discomfort; the occupations which they had created for themselves almost completely filled up their lives. Karl went into society with his wife when he could manage it; but, oftener, he left her in the hands of an intimate friend, an accomplished woman of the world, who had formed the little provincial dame. The theatre took up a good many of his evenings; when the play promised to be amusing his wife accompanied him, but more often he went alone. She did not see the fun of being bored, merely for the pleasure of being bored in his company; besides, she had so many engagements he thought it quite natural, and did not feel hurt.

The little "miller's wife," looking at her own reflection in the glass, while her maid altered a fold of her skirt, thought about all these things, and suddenly she asked herself what the future had in store for her; seeing far, very far off, not without secret terror, old age, the old age of two people living together, with none of those mutual souvenirs which render old age sweet. She would have liked to rush off to her husband to show herself to him, make him, perhaps, admire and caress her a little; she might force him to forget his eternal papers for a minute to say that he thought her pretty, and that he loved her!

But Karl had gone out. He was writing a great novel, on whose success he counted much. For one chapter of this romance he required to describe certain details of machinery in a manufactory, and one of his acquaintances had taken him to a large establishment not far from Paris. Jeanne was annoyed; she was afraid that he might be detained, and she had set her heart on his accompanying her to this peasant ball. It was already two o'clock in the afternoon. Oh, if he should be detained!

"Make it up out of your head; nobody will know the difference," she had said in the easy jargon which came to her so readily.

Karl had felt somewhat hurt: he prided himself on getting his scenes as "real" as possible; by nature and education he was romantic, but "realism" was now fashionable, and he, also, must veneer his imaginary surroundings with this "realism" so much in vogue. In this frame of mind, then, he had gone away with his friend, and his parting kiss to his wife had been bestowed with the coldness of irritation.

She remembered this; before, she had been too much taken up with her dress to think about it, and now it took all the pleasure out of her self-admiration. Suddenly she heard a noise below, at the hall door.

"There he is!" she thought.

Relieved and joyful, she amused herself with the idea of presenting herself before him in this costume, hoping only that he might have returned alone, and that his friend had not come with him. She did not like the friend.

She sprang out on to the staircase and called him by name. Suddenly she stopped short, silent, holding on by the baluster; her eyes starting from her head; her face pale in an instant; for there, at the entrance