Obscurity, The Sixteenth Chapter
In which the couturier discovers something in the philanthropist’s quarters, and it reveals a defect in his character.
e last read The Fifteenth Chapter, in which we met the Comte, and discovered him in the rather unfortunate company of his wife.

Séverine knelt at her prie-dieu, her black veil covering her head, her fingers intertwined before her. She did not pray the lord's prayer, for it no longer suited her. She did not pray the rosary, for it no longer nourished her. Instead, she just sat there.
She should feel guilty for her dalliance, she thought, for taking a lover into her bed. Indeed, she was still a married woman in the eyes of the Church and would be considered a harlot for such crimes. And yet seemingly overnight had no use for such stipulations and now determined to remove all trace of them from her mind.
She was disinterested in being yoked to some sense of regulatory goodness. That path only subjected her to the depraved tortures of her husband and the insidious haunting of his unmurdered soul. Instead, she resolved to follow her own sense of goodness, and those were much easier set of steps to determine.
Though she did not know what her purpose was or if there was such a thing, that only instilled in her the need to protect those near to her. Though she did not know where her soul would rest when she died, that only instilled in her the need to fight for each moment. There were no hours to pray, no scriptures to read, no penance to do, she had only to live her one and precious life and see that it was lived to the full.
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