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She faced him with set lips. “So, monsieur, your boasted comedy amounts only to this?”

“I am not sure of its meaning, madame. I think that, perhaps, the swine, wallowing in the mire which they have neither strength nor will to leave, may yet, at times, long–and long whole-heartedly–” De Puysange snapped his fingers. “Peste!” said he, “let us now have done with this dreary comedy! Beyond doubt de Soyecourt has much to answer for, in those idle words which were its germ. Let us hiss both collaborators, madame.”

“De Soyecourt!” she marveled, with, a little start. “Was it he who prompted you to make love to me?”

“Without intention,” pleaded the Duke. “He twitted me for my inability, as your husband, to gain your affections; but I do not question his finest sensibilities would be outraged by our disastrous revival of Philemon and Baucis.”

“Ah–!” said she. She was smiling at some reflection or other.

There was a pause. The Duc de Puysange drummed upon the window-pane; the Duchess, still faintly smiling, trifled with the thin gold chain that hung about her neck. Both knew their display of emotion to have been somewhat unmodern, not entirely à la mode.

“Decidedly,” spoke de Puysange, and turned toward her with a slight grimace, “I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably about the octogenarian.”

“Ah, Gaston,” she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, “let us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I.”

“So it would appear,” the Duc de Puysange conceded, not without sulkiness.

“Let us be friends,” she pleaded. “Remember, it was fifteen years ago I made the grave mistake of marrying a very charming man–“

“Merci!” cried the Duke.

“–and I did not know that I was thereby denying myself the pleasure of his acquaintance. I have learned too late that marrying a man is only the most civil way of striking him from one’s visiting-list.” The Duchess hesitated. “Frankly, Gaston, I do not regret the past month.”

“It has been adorable!” sighed the Duke.

“Yes,” she admitted; “except those awkward moments when you would insist on making love to me.”

“But no, madame,” cried he, “it was precisely–“

“O my husband, my husband!” she interrupted, with a shrug of the shoulders; “why, you do it so badly!”

The Duc de Puysange took a short turn about the apartment. “Yet I married you,” said he, “at sixteen–out of a convent!”

“Mon ami,” she murmured, in apology, “am I not to be frank with you? Would you have only the connubial confidences?”

“But I had no idea–” he began.

“Why, Gaston, it bored me to the very verge of yawning in my lover’s countenance. I, too, had no idea but that it would bore you equally–“

“Hein?” said the Duke.

“–to hear what d’Humières–“

“He squints!” cried the Duc de Puysange.

“–or de Créquy–“

“That red-haired ape!” he muttered.

“–or d’Arlanges, or–or any of them, was pleased to say. In fact, it was my duty to conceal from my husband anything which might involve him in duels. Now that we are friends, of course it is entirely different.”

The Duchess smiled; the Duke walked up and down the room with the contained ferocity of a caged tiger.

“In duels! in a whole series of duels! So these seducers besiege you in platoons. Ma foi, friendship is a good oculist! Already my vision improves.”

“Gaston!” she cried. The Duchess rose and laid both hands upon his shoulders. “Gaston–?” she repeated.

For a heart-beat the Duc de Puysange looked into his wife’s eyes; then he sadly smiled and shook his head. “Madame,” said the Duke, “I do not doubt you. Ah, believe me, I have comprehended, always, that in your keeping my honor was quite safe–far more safe than in mine, as Heaven and most of the fiends well know. You have been a true and faithful wife to a worthless brute who has not deserved it.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. De Puysange stood very erect; his heels clicked together, and his voice was earnest. “I thank you, madame, and I pray you to believe that I have never doubted you. You are too perfect to err–Frankly, and between friends.” added the Duke, “it was your cold perfection which frightened me. You are an icicle, Hélène.”