She then began to talk to the abbé and Mademoiselle Smith. She brought the children into the conversation and spoke tenderly to them, filling their little hearts with the sweetness that comes from a mother’s devoted attention. When dinner was over she moved with everyone else to the drawing room. She got the older ones talking and told the little ones stories. When bedtime came for them all she gave them each a long kiss. Then, having sent them off to bed, she retired alone to her room.

She felt certain he would come. With her children out of the way, she decided to defend her body the same way she had preserved her dignity earlier on. In the pocket of her dressing-gown she slid the revolver, this time loaded. The clocks chimed the hours as they passed. Eventually every sound in the house ceased. All that could be heard was the noise of the fiacres in the street beyond, filtering through the heavily tapestried walls of her room as a distant, muffled rumble.

She waited, alert and expectant, with all fear gone. She was ready for anything now and felt something akin to triumph. She had found something that would torment him every hour of the day for as long as he lived. The first light of dawn crept through the fringes at the bottom of her curtains and still he had not come to her room. Stupefied, she realized now he had no intention of doing so. Having locked herself in and shot the bolt she had had fixed for security, she climbed into bed and lay with her eyes open, thinking, wondering and trying to guess what his plan might be.

Later, as she brought in her mistress’s tea, the maid gave her a letter from the Comte. In it he wrote that he was going on a long journey, adding in a postscript that his lawyer would see that she had everything she needed…

III

Six Years Later

In the coupé3 carrying them home from a performance at the Opéra, the Comte and Comtesse de Mascaret, sitting side by side, were again silent. Suddenly the husband said to his wife: ‘Gabrielle!’

‘What is it?’

‘Don’t you think this has gone on long enough now?’

‘What has?’

‘The torture you’ve been putting me through for the past six years.’

‘I can’t help that, I’m afraid.’

‘Tell me which one. Please.’

‘Never.’

‘Just try and imagine what it’s like for me. I can’t set eyes on my children, I can’t feel them around me, ever, without this terrible doubt crushing the life out of me. Tell me which one and I promise to forgive, to treat him or her exactly like the others.’

‘I can’t. I have no right.’