2
I did not recover myself until I was on the quay outside and felt the cold night-air against my face. My skirt was trailing on the ground; my hands made no movement to hold it up.
With my disgust and resentment there was mingled a vague feeling of remorse. Was it not I who had taught the girl the shamelessness that admits desire and the prudence that refuses to submit to it? Had I not wished for her, above all other treasures, the power of judging, appreciating, choosing?
Yes, but when I had talked of choosing, I had never imagined that the choice could be made in cold blood! So far from that, it had seemed to me that no more dangerous or painful experience could visit a woman's heart. The victory of mind over instinct and of will over desire is the price of a hideous, abnormal struggle opposed to the very law of our nature. A sad victory baptised with tears, a sacred preparation for the noble defeat that is to crown a woman's life!
Besides, it was not her refusal that revolted me, for we cannot judge an action of which we do not know the reasons; it was her demeanour, her horrible indifference. The ugliness of the scene would not have offended me, I reflected, if the woman had been in any way troubled by it; if I had seen her resist her own desire or at least deplore that which she was unable to share; if I had seen her struggle for a sentiment or suffer for an idea, however absurd or wild! But Rose had had neither tears nor compassion; and the blind instinct that always prompts us to give our lives had not tempted her.
I continued to see that face of marble. I heard those impassive words. I pictured that body which felt no thrill, that mouth which abandoned itself without giving itself. No, I had never taught her anything of that kind; for, however light the pain which we cause and whatever its nature, we are forgiven only if our own heart feels a deeper wound. I did not understand her conduct. What had prompted it? To what chains of weakness had her soul stealthily attached itself, that soul which I had jealously protected against all principles and prejudices? What secret limits had she assigned herself despite my watchful care to give her none?
I felt grieved and disappointed; and yet ... and yet I walked along with a certain gladness in my step. The tears trembling on my lashes were not tears of helplessness, but of a too-insistent energy, for they came above all from my overwrought nerves. My mind saw clear and rent my remorse like a superfluous veil.
No, I was not responsible! Our thought, once expressed, no longer belongs to us. Whether it leave us when scarce ripe, because an accident has gathered it, or whether it fall in its season, like the leaf falling from the tree, we know nothing of what it will become; and it is at once the wretchedness and the greatness of human thought to be subjected to the infinite forms of every mind and of every existence.
I walked for a long time without heeding the hour. The sky was clear and the stars glowed in its depths like live things; in the distance, the Trocadéro decked the night with brilliants.
And, little by little, hope returned to me. I was persuaded that over there, in the little room which my care had provided for Rose, love would yet be the conqueror. She would awaken under those kisses. My Roseline should yet know passion and rapture. Love would triumph. It would do what I had been unable to do, it would breathe life into beauty! And, in the dead stillness, I kept hearing the kisses falling, falling heavily, like the first drops of a storm.