for a few weeks. Jacqueline flung herself into it energetically, and
almost passionately and exaggeratedly: it was as though her eternal
happiness depended on the color of her hangings or the shape of an old
chest. Then she resumed intercourse with her father and mother and her
friends. As she had entirely forgotten them during her year of love, it
was as though she had made their acquaintance for the first time: just
as part of her soul was merged in Olivier's, so part of Olivier's soul was
merged in hers, and she saw her old friends with new eyes. They
seemed to her to have gained much. Olivier did not lose by it at first.
They were a set-off to each other. The moral reserve and the poetic
light and shade of her husband made Jacqueline find more pleasure in
those worldly people who only think of enjoying themselves, and of being
brilliant and charming: and the seductive but dangerous failings of
their world, which she knew so much better because she belonged to it,
made her appreciate the security of her lover's affection. She amused
herself with these comparisons, and loved to linger over them, the
better to justify her choice.--She lingered over them to such an extent
that sometimes she could not tell why she had made that choice. Happily,
such moments never lasted long. She would be sorry for them, and was
never so tender with Olivier as when they were past. Thereupon she would
begin again. By the time it had become a habit with her it had ceased to
amuse her: and the comparison became more aggressive: instead of
complementing each other, the two opposing worlds declared war on each
other. She began to wonder why Olivier lacked the qualities, if not some
of the failings, which she now admired in her Parisian friends. She did
not tell him so: but Olivier often felt his wife looking at him without
any indulgence in her eyes, and it hurt him and made him uneasy.

However, he had not lost the ascendancy over Jacqueline which love had
given him: and they would have gone on quite happily living their life