Madame Marneffe, twenty-three years of age, a pure and bashful
middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know
nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron
could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the
charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to
the utmost--all along the line, as the saying goes.
The question having come to this point between Hector and Valerie, it
is not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the
secret of the intended marriage between the great sculptor Steinbock
and Hortense Hulot. Between a lover on his promotion and a lady who
hesitates long before becoming his mistress, there are contests,
uttered or unexpressed, in which a word often betrays a thought; as,
in fencing, the foils fly as briskly as the swords in duel. Then a
prudent man follows the example of Monsieur de Turenne. Thus the Baron
had hinted at the greater freedom his daughter's marriage would allow
him, in reply to the tender Valerie, who more than once had exclaimed:
"I cannot imagine how a woman can go wrong for a man who is not wholly
hers."
And a thousand times already the Baron had declared that for
five-and-twenty years all had been at an end between Madame Hulot and
himself.
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