Her life till now had been spent almost without suffering, varied only by Olivier’s affection and agitated only by the desire to retain it. She had succeeded, had been always victorious in that struggle. Her heart, lulled by success and flattery, having become the exacting organ of a lovely worldling to whom are due all the sweets of earth, after consenting to a brilliant marriage with which inclination had nothing to do, after later having accepted love as the complement of a happy existence, after having resigned herself to a guilty affection, mainly from impulse and a little from a worship of sentiment itself, as a compensation for the daily treadmill of existence—her heart had taken up a position, had barricaded itself in the happiness chance had given her, with no other desire than to defend itself against the surprises of each day. She had, therefore, accepted with a pretty woman’s complacence the agreeable conditions that presented themselves, and, venturing but little, tormented but little by new wants and longings for the unknown, though loving, tenacious, and cautious, content with the present, apprehensive by nature of the future, had known how to enjoy the benefits furnished her by Destiny with sparing and sagacious prudence.

Now, little by little, without her daring even to realize it, the indistinct prepossessions of passing days, of advancing years had slipped into her soul. It had, in her mind, the effect of a little ceaseless irritation. But well knowing that this descent of life was without interruption, that once begun it could no longer be stayed, yielding to the instinct of danger, she closed her eyes as she let herself slip along, that she might preserve her dream, that she might not be made giddy by the abyss or desperate by her helplessness.

She lived on, therefore, smiling, with a sort of factitious pride in preserving her beauty so long; and when Annette appeared by her side with the freshness of her eighteen years, instead of suffering from this association, she was proud, on the contrary, of the fact that she should be preferred in the accomplished grace of her maturity to that blooming young girl in the radiant freshness of her early years.