"Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband's bread!" She bowed her head.

She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that _he_ was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that.

She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly: "You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?" "What am I saying it for? what for?" he went on, as angrily.

"That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.

" "Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway," she said; and again, at the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes.