- When elderly Joseph Moreau and his young wife Therese offer refuge to starving young dramatist Paul Savary, gossips begin to spread rumors of a love affair between the wife and the writer. For the good of all concerned, Paul moves into separate quarters. One day Paul overhears the gossip again at a café and challenges the purveyor of the lie to a duel. Moreau, for his own satisfaction, takes Paul's place in combat and is mortally wounded. Moreau staggers to Paul's apartment where he discovers Therese, who has come to beg the writer to refuse to fight. The husband dies cursing the traitorous couple, and then it is revealed that the whole incident was the narrative of Paul's new play, which he is reciting to Moreau and Therese.
- Jose Moreau, a rich merchant about forty years of age, is ideally married to Therese a beautiful woman in her early twenties, who adores him. He is a generous and kindly man, and upon the death of an old and honored friend, to whose assistance in the past he owes his present fortune, he adopts into his household the son of this friend, Paul. Paul is twenty-six years old; he reads poems and writes plays, and is a thoroughly fine fellow. Paul feels an almost filial affection for Mons. Jose and a wholesome brotherly friendship for Therese. He accompanies Jose and Therese everywhere in the social world; he sits in their box at the opera, acting as Therese's escort when her husband is detained by business. Society, with sinister imagination, begins to look askance at the triangulated household; tongues begin to wag, and gossip grows. Tidings of the evil talk about town are brought to Mons. Jose by his brother, Louis, who advises that Paul had better be requested to live in quarters of his own. Jose repels the suggestion as insulting, but Louis persists that only by such a course may the family name be rendered unimpeachable upon the public tongue. Paul, to still the evil rumors, goes to live in a studio alone. This simple move on his part suggests to everybody that he must have had a real motive for making it. Gossip increases, instead of diminishing, and the emotions of Therese and Jose himself are stirred to the point of nervous tensity. Mons. Jose, in spite of his own sweet reasonableness, begins subtly to wonder if there could be, by any possibility, any basis for his brother's vehemence. Louis' wife, Marie, repeats the talk of the town to Therese, and turns her imagination inward, till it falters in self-questioning. The world at large whispers unthinkable and tragic possibilities to the poetic and self-searching mind of Paul. He resolves to seek release in leaving for foreign shores. But before he can sail away he overhears, in a fashionable café, a remark which casts a slur on Therese, and strikes the speaker of the insult in the face. A duel is forthwith arranged to take place in a vacant studio adjacent to Paul's. when Mons. Jose learns about it, he is troubled by the idea that another man should be fighting for his wife, and rushes forthwith to wreak vengeance himself on the traducer. Therese hears the news, and in order to prevent both her husband and Paul from endangering their lives, she rushes to Paul's rooms to urge him to forestall hostilities. Meanwhile her husband encounters the slanderer, and is severely wounded. He is carried to Paul's studio. Hearing people coming, Therese hides herself in Paul's bedroom, where she is discovered by her husband's attendants. Jose, wounded and enfevered, now at last believes the worst. Paul seeks and slays Jose's assailant. But now the whole world credits what the whole world has been whispering. In vain Paul and Therese protest their innocence to Louis and his wife. In vain they plead with the kindly and noble man they both revere and love. Jose curses them, and dies believing in their guilt. Then at last, when they find themselves cast forth isolate by the entire world, their common tragic loneliness draws them to each other. They are given to each other by the world. The insidious purpose of babbling tongues has been accomplished. Paul takes Therese for his own.
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