I went up to her.
“What is the matter?” I said to her in a low voice.
She pressed my hand without a word, for tears still veiled her voice. But after a few minutes, recovering herself a little, she said to me:
“You have been very unkind to me, Armand, and I have done nothing to you.”
“Nothing?” I answered, with a bitter smile.
“Nothing but what circumstances forced me to do.”
I do not know if you have ever in your life experienced, or if you will ever experience, what I felt at the sight of Marguerite.
The last time she had come to see me she had sat in the same place where she was now sitting; only, since then, she had been the mistress of another man, other kisses than mine had touched her lips, toward which, in spite of myself, my own reached out, and yet I felt that I loved this woman as much, more perhaps, than I had ever loved her.
It was difficult for me to begin the conversation on the subject which brought her. Marguerite no doubt realized it, for she went on:
“I have come to trouble you, Armand, for I have two things to ask: pardon for what I said yesterday to Mlle. Olympe, and pity for what you are perhaps still ready to do to me. Intentionally or not, since your return you have given me so much pain that I should be incapable now of enduring a fourth part of what I have endured till now. You will have pity on me, won’t you? And you will understand that a man who is not heartless has other nobler things to do than to take his revenge upon a sick and sad woman like me. See, take my hand. I am in a fever. I left my bed to come to you, and ask, not for your friendship, but for your indifference.”