" But express what--what decision?" he said to himself in the drawing room, and he found no reply.

" But after all," he asked himself before turning into the boudoir, "what has occurred? Nothing.

She was talking a long while with him.

But what of that? Surely women in society can talk to whom they please.

And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and her," he told himself as he went into her boudoir; but this dictum, which had always had such weight with him before, had now no weight and no meaning at all.