He felt more surprised and saddened than unhappy. He had been very much in love with her during the early years of their marriage but his passion had gradually cooled. Now, though in a way he still found the Baroness attractive, he was frequently involved with other women, sometimes from the theatre, sometimes from wider afield. She was extremely young, not quite twenty-four, small, strikingly blonde and slim, not to say skinny. A little Parisian doll with fine, delicate features, she was smart and flirtatious, but endowed with more charm than real beauty. Joking familiarly with his brother about her, he would say: ‘My wife, you know … she’s attractive, alluring and all that, but … there’s nothing to her, you know? She’s like an over-frothy glass of champagne. Too much bubble, not enough substance.’

He paced worriedly up and down his room thinking of a million things at once. Every so often a wave of anger surged over him and he felt a savage desire to go and beat the daylights out of the marquis or go and slap his face publicly at his club. Such bad taste though, he reflected – people would laugh at him, not at the other fellow. Wounded pride, not a broken heart, he thought, going to bed, but not to sleep.

A few days later, the word around Paris was that the Baron and Baroness d’Etrailles had come to an amicable agreement to separate on grounds of mutual incompatibility. Nothing untoward was suspected. There were no ugly rumours and no real surprise was felt. Nevertheless, in order to avoid possibly painful encounters, the Baron travelled abroad for a year. The following summer he was at various coastal resorts, then in the autumn went hunting. He returned to Paris for the winter but never once did he see his wife. He knew that no gossip surrounded her name. At least she was being careful to keep up appearances and that was all he asked.