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“Monsieur,” said she, “will you be pleased to tell me the meaning of this comedy?”

“Madame,” de Puysange answered, and raised his gloomy eyebrows, “I do not entirely comprehend.”

“Ah,” said she, “believe me, I do not undervalue your perception. I have always esteemed your cleverness, monsieur, however much”–she paused for a moment, a fluctuating smile upon her lips,–“however much I may have regretted its manifestations. I am not clever, and to me cleverness has always seemed to be an infinite incapacity for hard work; its results are usually a few sonnets, an undesirable wife, and a warning for one’s acquaintances. In your case it is, of course, different; you have your statesmanship to play with–“

“And statesmen have no need of cleverness, you would imply, madame?”

“I do not say that. In any event, you are the Duc de Puysange, and the weight of a great name stifles stupidity and cleverness without any partiality. With you, cleverness has taken the form of a tendency to intoxication, amours, and–amiability. I have acquiesced in this. But, for the past month–“

“The happiest period of my life!” breathed the Duke.

“–you have been pleased to present me with flowers, bonbons, jewels, and what not. You have actually accorded your wife the courtesies you usually preserve for the ladies of the ballet. You have dogged my footsteps, you have attempted to intrude into my bedroom, you have talked to me as–well, very much as–“

“Much as the others do?” de Puysange queried, helpfully. “Pardon me, madame, but, in one’s own husband, I had thought this very routine might savor of originality.”

The Duchess flushed, “All the world knows, monsieur, that in your estimation what men have said to me, or I to them, has been for fifteen years a matter of no moment! It is not due to you that I am still–“

“A pearl,” finished the Duke, gallantly,–then touched himself upon the chest,–“cast before swine,” he sighed.

She rose to her feet. “Yes, cast before swine!” she cried, with a quick lift of speech. She seemed very tall as she stood tapping her fingers upon the table, irresolutely; but after an instant she laughed and spread out her fine hands in an impotent gesture. “Ah, monsieur,” she said, “my father entrusted to your keeping a clean-minded girl! What have you made of her, Gaston?”

A strange and profoundly unreasonable happiness swept through the Duke’s soul as she spoke his given name for the first time within his memory. Surely, the deep contralto voice had lingered over it?–half-tenderly, half-caressingly, one might think.

The Duke put aside his coffee-cup and, rising, took his wife’s soft hands in his. “What have I made of her? I have made of her, Hélène, the one object of all my desires.”

Her face flushed. “Mountebank!” she cried, and struggled to free herself; “do you mistake me, then, for a raddle-faced actress in a barn? Ah, les demoiselles have formed you, monsieur,–they have formed you well!”

“Pardon!” said the Duke. He released her hands, he swept back his hair with a gesture of impatience. He turned from his wife, and strolled toward a window, where, for a little, he tapped upon the pane, his murky countenance twitching oddly, as he stared into the quiet and sunlit street. “Madame,” he began, in a level voice, “I will tell you the meaning of the comedy. To me,–always, as you know, a creature of whims,–there came, a month ago, a new whim which I thought attractive, unconventional, promising. It was to make love to my own wife rather than to another man’s. Ah, I grant you, it is incredible,” he cried, when the Duchess raised her hand as though to speak,–“incredible, fantastic, and ungentlemanly! So be it; nevertheless, I have played out my rôle. I have been the model husband; I have put away wine and–les demoiselles; for it pleased me, in my petty insolence, to patronize, rather than to defy, the laws of God and man. Your perfection irritated me, madame; it pleased me to demonstrate how easy is this trick of treating the world as the antechamber of a future existence. It pleased me to have in my life one space, however short, over which neither the Recording Angel nor even you might draw a long countenance. It pleased me, in effect, to play out the comedy, smug-faced and immaculate,–for the time. I concede that I have failed in my part. Hiss me from the stage, madame; add one more insult to the already considerable list of those affronts which I have put upon you; one more will scarcely matter.”