The even bluster of the mistral, with which he had been combating some hours, had not suspended, though it had embittered, that predominant passion.

His first look was for his wife, a look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and love, that made the over-blooming brute appear for the moment almost beautiful.

She returned his glance, at first as though she knew him not, then with a swiftly waxing coldness of intent; and at last, without changing their direction, she had closed her eyes.
There passed across her mind during that period much that Paradou could not have understood had it been told to him in words: chiefly the sense of an enlightening contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned for and that to which she had been long exposed like a victim bound upon the altar.
There swelled upon her, swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence and disgust.

She had succumbed to the monster, humbling herself below animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the semi-divine.

It was in the pang of that humiliating thought that she had closed her eyes.
Paradou--quick as beasts are quick, to translate silence--felt the insult through his blood; his inarticulate soul bellowed within him for revenge.
He glanced about the shop.