zeal. He was often silenced, for his slow moving mind could not follow
the vagaries of that rapid little brain.

What would she be at again to-day? "The old gossip Cicero...." And,
"Mme. de Sevigne remarks...." What a rattling and tinkling. It
provoked him.

And her love! ... That was a bad business. What is one to do with a
mistress who, before falling asleep, is capable of lecturing on
Schopenhauer's metaphysics of sex, and will prove to you up to the
hilt how unworthy it really is to permit oneself to be duped by nature
if one does not share her aim for the generations to come?

The man is still to be born upon whom such wisdom, uttered at such an
hour--by lips however sweet--does not cast a chill.

Since that philosophical night he had left untouched the little key
that hung yonder over his desk and that give him, in her house, the
sacred privileges of a husband. And so his life became once more a
hunt after new women who filled his heart with unrest and with the
foolish fires of youth.

But Alice had never been angry at him. Apparently she lacked
nothing....

And his thoughts wandered from her to the woman who had lain against
his breast to-night, shuddering in her stolen joy.

Heavens! He had almost forgotten one thing!