It was true that, when Odette had just done something
which she did not wish to disclose, she would take pains to conceal it in
a secret place in her heart. But as soon as she found herself face to face
with the man to whom she was obliged to lie, she became uneasy, all her
ideas melted like wax before a flame, her inventive and her reasoning
faculties were paralysed, she might ransack her brain but would find only
a void; still, she must say something, and there lay within her reach
precisely the fact which she had wished to conceal, which, being the
truth, was the one thing that had remained. She broke off from it a tiny
fragment, of no importance in itself, assuring herself that, after all, it
was the best thing to do, since it was a detail of the truth, and less
dangerous, therefore, than a falsehood. "At any rate, this is true," she
said to herself; "that's always something to the good; he may make
inquiries; he will see that this is true; it won't be this, anyhow, that
will give me away." But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had
not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp
edges which could not: be made to fit in, except to those contiguous
fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily detached it, edges
which, whatever the fictitious details in which she might embed it, would
continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and by the gaps which she
had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was elsewhere.
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