Sometimes when he wanted to find an excuse he said to himself it was
because she felt humiliated that he should still doubt. At other times,
he stumbled on explanations that terrified him. Then he remembered with
bitterness the promise that he had exacted from her, a promise that,
instead of bringing him peace, had left only an endless torment, and
forgetting all his protestations he would cry to himself, in a cold
perspiration:
"Ah, if she is really lying, how can I ever be sure?"
III
In the eighth year, Madeleine Conti retired from the stage and announced
her marriage. After five years of complete happiness she was taken
suddenly ill, as the result of exposure to a drenching storm. One
afternoon, as he waited by her bedside, talking in broken tones of all
that they had been to each other, he said to her in a voice that he
tried nervously to school to quietness:
"Madeleine, you know that our life together has been without the
slightest shadow from the first. You know we have proved to each other
how immense our love has been.
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