She paused anew, and then very low: "Then you know all ?" He nodded assent.

And a heavy silence fell over the chamber of suffering.

The night before, on his return from a party given by the empress, he had received the letter Sabine had written her lover.

After an atrocious night passed in the meditation of vengeance he had gone out in the morning in order to resist a longing which prompted him to kill his wife.

Outside, under a sudden, sweet influence of a fine June morning, he had lost the thread of his thoughts and had come to Nana's, as he always came at terrible moments in his life.