But I had to renounce going to balls; it made him suffer too much." Countess Martin expressed astonishment.

She had always imagined Marmet as an old man, timid, and absorbed by his thoughts; a little ridiculous, between his wife, plump, white, and amiable, and the skeleton wearing a helmet of bronze and gold.

But the excellent widow confided to her that, at fifty-five years of age, when she was fifty-three, Louis was just as jealous as on the first day of their marriage.
And Therese thought that Robert had never tormented her with jealousy.
Was it on his part a proof of tact and good taste, a mark of confidence, or was it that he did not love her enough to make her suffer?
She did not know, and she did not have the heart to try to know.

She would have to look through recesses of her mind which she preferred not to open.
She murmured carelessly: "We long to be loved, and when we are loved we are tormented or worried." The day was finished in reading and thinking.

Choulette did not reappear.