The occasion for an explanation arrived in due time.
On a fine April morning the countess accepted Nathan's arm for a walk through the sequestered path of the Bois de Boulogne.

She intended to make him one of those pretty little quarrels apropos of nothing, which women are so fond of exciting.

Instead of greeting him as usual, with a smile upon her lips, her forehead illumined with pleasure, her eyes bright with some gay or delicate thought, she assumed a grave and serious aspect.
"What is the matter ?" said Nathan.
"Why do you pretend to such ignorance ?" she replied.

"You ought to know that a woman is not a child." "Have I displeased you ?" "Should I be here if you had ?" "But you don't smile to me; you don't seem happy to see me." "Oh! do you accuse me of sulking ?" she said, looking at him with that submissive air which women assume when they want to seem victims.
Nathan walked on a few steps in a state of real apprehension which oppressed him.
"It must be," he said, after a moment's silence, "one of those frivolous fears, those hazy suspicions which women dwell on more than they do on the great things of life.

You all have a way of tipping the world sideways with a straw, a cobweb--" "Sarcasm!" she said, "I might have expected it!" "Marie, my angel, I only said those words to wring your secret out of you." "My secret would be always a secret, even if I told it to you." "But all the same, tell it to me." "I am not loved," she said, giving him one of those sly oblique glances with which women question so maliciously the men they are trying to torment.
"Not loved!" cried Nathan.
"No; you are too occupied with other things.