what?”
“You know.”
“And then?”
“And then I am very wretched.”
She said to him with mingled fatuity and commiseration: “I thought that was the case when I received your telegram, and that was the reason that I came, with the resolve that I would go back again at once if I found that I had made a mistake.” She was silent a moment and then went on: “Since I am not going back immediately, may I go and look around your place? That little alley of lindens yonder has a very charming appearance; it looks as if it might be cooler out there than here in this drawingroom.”
They went out. She had on a mauve dress that harmonized so well with the verdure of the trees and the blue of the sky that she appeared to him like some amazing apparition, of an entirely new style of beauty and seductiveness. Her tall and willowy form, her bright, clean-cut features, the little blaze of blond hair beneath a hat that was mauve, like the dress, and lightly crowned by a long plume of ostrich-feathers rolled about it, her tapering arms with the two hands holding the closed sunshade crosswise before her, the loftiness of her carriage, and the directness of her step seemed to introduce into the humble little garden something exotic, something that was foreign to it. It was a figure from one of Watteau’s pictures, or from some fairy-tale or dream, the imagination of a poet’s or an artist’s fancy, which had been seized by the whim of coming away to the country to show how beautiful it was. As Mariolle looked at her, all trembling with his newly lighted passion, he recalled to mind the two peasant women that he had seen in Montigny village.
“Who is the little person who opened the door for me?” she inquired.
“She is my servant.”
“She does not look like a waitress.”
“No; she is very good looking.”
“Where did you secure her?”
“Quite near here; in an inn frequented by painters, where her innocence was in danger from the customers.”
“And you preserved it?”
He blushed and replied: “Yes, I preserved it.”
“To your own advantage, perhaps.”
“Certainly, to my own advantage, for I would rather have a pretty face about me than an ugly one.”
“Is that the only feeling that she inspires in you?”
“Perhaps it was she who inspired in me the irresistible desire of seeing you again, for every woman when she attracts my eyes, even if it is only for the duration of a second, carries my thoughts back to you.”
“That was a very pretty piece of special pleading! And does she love her preserver?”
He blushed more deeply than before. Quick as lightning the thought flashed through his mind that jealousy is always efficacious as a stimulant to a woman’s feelings, and decided him to tell only half a lie, so he answered, hesitatingly: “I don’t know how that is; it may be so. She is very attentive to me.”
Rather pettishly, Mme de Burne murmured: And you?”
He fastened upon her his eyes that were aflame with love, and replied: “Nothing could ever distract my thoughts from you.”
This was also a very shrewd answer, but the phrase seemed to her so much the expression of an indisputable truth, that she let it pass without noticing it. Could a woman such as she have any doubts about a thing like that? So she was satisfied, in fact, and had no further doubts upon the subject of Elisabeth.
They took two canvas chairs and seated themselves in the shade of the lindens over the running stream. He asked her: “What did you think of me?”
“That you must have been very wretched.”
“Was it through my fault or yours?”
“Through the fault of us both.”
“And then?”
“And then, knowing how beside yourself you were, I reflected that it would be best to give you a little time to cool down. So I waited.”
“What were you waiting for?”
“For a word from you. I received it, and here I am. Now we are going to talk like people of sense. So you love me still? I do not ask you this as a coquette — I ask it as your friend.”
“I love you still.”
“And what is it that you wish?”
“How can I answer that? I am in your power.”
“Oh! my ideas are very clear, but I will not tell you them without first knowing what yours are.
Tell me of yourself, of what has been passing in your heart and in your mind since you ran away from me.”
“I have been thinking of you; I have had no other occupation.” He told her of his resolution to forget her, his flight, his coming to the great forest in which he had found nothing but her image, of his days filled with memories of her, and his long nights of consuming jealousy; he told her everything, with entire truthfulness, always excepting his love for Elisabeth, whose name he did not mention.
She listened, well assured that he was not lying, convinced by her inner consciousness of her power over him, even more than by the sincerity of his manner, and delighted with her victory, glad that she was about to regain him, for she loved him still.
Then he bemoaned himself over this situation that seemed to have no end, and warming up as he told of all that he had suffered after having carried it so long in his thoughts, he again reproached her, but without anger, without bitterness, in terms of impassioned poetry, with that impotency of loving of which she was the victim. He told her over and over: “Others have not the gift of pleasing; you have not the gift of loving.”
She interrupted him, speaking warmly, full of arguments and illustrations. “At least I have the gift of being faithful,” she said. “Suppose I had adored you for ten months, and then fallen in love with another man, would you be less unhappy than you are?”
He exclaimed: “Is it, then, impossible for a woman to love only one man?”
But she had her answer ready for him: “No one can keep on loving forever; all that one can do is to be constant. Do you believe that that exalted delirium of the senses can last for years? No, no. As for the most of those women who are addicted to passions, to violent caprices of greater or less duration, they simply transform life into a novel. Their heroes are different, the events and circumstances are unforeseen and constantly changing, the dénouement varies. I admit that for them it is amusing and diverting, for with every change they have a new set of emotions, but for him — when it is ended, that is the last of it. Do you understand me?”
“Yes; what you say has some truth in it. But I do not see what you are getting at.”
“It is this: there is no passion that endures a very long time; by that I mean a burning, torturing passion like that from which you are suffering now.
