the feet of women to adore them, for such moments are sublime, moments
when the forces of the heart and intellect gush forth like the waters
of sculptured nymphs from their inclining urns. Sabine burst into
tears.

Suddenly as if bitten by a viper, she left Calyste, threw herself on a
sofa and fainted away, for the reaction of a chill to her glowing
heart came near to killing her. As she held Calyste in her arms, her
nose at his cravat, abandoned to her joy, she smelt the perfume of
that letter paper! Another woman's head had lain there, whose hair and
face had left that adulterous odor! She had just kissed the spot where
the kisses of her rival were still warm.

"What is the matter?" asked Calyste, after he had brought Sabine back
to consciousness by passing a damp cloth over her face and making her
smell salts.

"Fetch the doctor and my nurse, both! Yes, my milk has turned, I feel
it. They won't come at once unless you fetch them yourself--go!"

Calyste, alarmed, rushed out. The moment Sabine heard the closing of
the porte-cochere she started up like a frightened doe, and walked
about the salon as if beside herself, crying out, "My God! my God! my
God!"

Those two words took the place of all ideas. The crisis she had seized
upon as a pretext in reality took place. The hairs of her head were
like so many red-hot needles heated in the fire of a nervous fever.
Her boiling blood seemed to her to mingle with her nerves and yet try
to issue from all her pores. She was blind for a few moments, and