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From thinking of her husband she turned to thinking of herself, wondering how and why she had fallen; patiently, but in a vague dreamy kind of manner, analysing her feelings towards the man who had wrought her ruin, and for whose gratification she had imperilled her social status and her soul. For his gratification, not for hers! In her self-examination she did not find one grain of love for Gustave de Tournefort; she had not even had a caprice, a passion for him, and had only listened to his oft-urged suit when completely worn out with solitude, loneliness, and neglect. Love, passion--she had known them but once, in the early days of her marriage, when she thought that there had never lived on this earth a man comparable to her husband; none so handsome, none with such an easy bearing, such biting wit, such delicious insolence. She had sat down and worshipped him with all her soul and strength, heedless of her father's good-humoured raillery, heedless of her mother's tearful entreaties and solemn warnings; she had set up her idol and bowed down before it, only to find after a little time that it was a very ordinary kind of fetish indeed.