The carriage was pulling into the courtyard. As it stopped in front of the steps the Comte got down and as usual offered his wife his arm to mount the steps. When they reached the first floor, he said: ‘May I have a few more minutes with you?’

‘Certainly,’ she replied.

They went into the little drawing room where a footman, surprised, lit candles for them. When they were alone again the Comte continued: ‘How can I know which is the real truth? I begged you a thousand times to tell me but you kept silent. You were inflexible and inexorable. There was no way I could get through to you. And now you say you were lying all along. That for six years you let me believe such a dreadful thing. No! It must be today that you’re lying, perhaps because you feel sorry for me, I don’t know.’

With both conviction and sincerity ringing in her voice she replied: ‘Had I not done so, I should have had another four children by this time.’

‘What a way for a mother to speak!’ he cried.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I have no maternal feelings whatsoever for babies I never had. It’s quite enough to be mother to the ones I already do have and to love them with all my heart. We are women of the civilized world, Monsieur. We refuse, absolutely, to remain the repopulation machines of the world. As she rose to leave he took both of her hands in his.

‘One word, just one, Gabrielle. Tell me the real truth will you?’

‘I have just told it to you. I was never once unfaithful to you in my life.’

He looked at her directly. She was so beautiful with her grey eyes like the winter sky. In the deep, dark night of her hair a tiara with a dusting of diamonds shone like the Milky Way. Suddenly he had a strong, instinctive feeling that this human being standing before him was no longer a woman whose destiny in life was to ensure the survival of the species. He suddenly saw her as the strange and mysterious incarnation of all our complex desires accumulated over the centuries. It was this being which diverted man from his primitive notion of predestination and towards a more mystical kind of beauty, evanescent and impalpable. Some of this beauty blooms in our dreams alone, made lovelier still by everything with which civilization has surrounded woman: she embodies the spirit of poetry and idealism which we crave even more than the satisfaction of our other appetites.

Her husband remained standing before her, stunned by this belated and complex discovery. Though he could not quite understand it all yet, he knew that it had something to do with the cause of his former jealousy.

Finally he spoke: ‘I believe you. I sense that you are not lying. Before, I thought you were lying all the time.’