"It's better,
after all, that she should have a sweetheart. That will occupy her mind,
and prevent her thinking of injuring me. She's deucedly more clever than
I am."
What astonished him, was that he had not been the first to think of
plunging into vice, which might have driven away his terror. But his
thoughts had never turned in that direction, and, moreover, he had not
the least inclination for riotous living. The infidelity of his wife did
not trouble him in the least. He felt no anger at the knowledge that she
was in the arms of another man. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy
the idea. He began to think that he had been following the wife of a
comrade, and laughed at the cunning trick the woman was playing her
husband. Therese had become such a stranger to him, that he no longer
felt her alive in his heart. He would have sold her, bound hand and
foot, a hundred times over, to purchase calm for one hour.
As he sauntered along, he enjoyed the sudden, delightful reaction that
had just brought him from terror to peace. He almost thanked his wife
for having gone to a sweetheart, when he thought her on her way to a
commissary of police. This adventure had come to an unforeseen end that
agreeably surprised him.
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