The prostration caused by this discovery lasted but a second. Bertha rushed to the door of the room, pushed it open violently, and appeared on the threshold like an embodiment of Vengeance, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flaming, her face livid, her breast heaving.
Mary gave a cry and fell on her knees with her face in her hands. She had guessed the whole at a single glance, so frightfully convulsed was Bertha's face.
Michel, horrified by Bertha's look, rose hastily, and, as though he found himself suddenly in presence of an enemy, he mechanically put his hand on his arms.
"Strike!" cried Bertha, who saw his action; "strike, miserable man! It will be a fit conclusion to your baseness and your treachery!"
"Bertha," stammered Michel, "let me tell you, let me explain to you!"
"To your knees! to your knees!--you and your accomplice!" cried Bertha. "Say on your knees the lies you will invent for your defence! Oh, the vile wretch! And I have flown here to save his life! I, half mad with terror and despair for the fate that was hanging over him; I, who have forgotten all, all, honor, duty; I, who laid my life at his feet, who had but one thought, one object, one desire, one wish,--that of saying to him, 'Michel, look! see how I love you!'--I come, and I find him betraying his word, denying his promises, faithless to sacred ties--I will not say of love, but of gratitude--and with whom? for whom? The being I loved next to him in this world, the companion of my childhood,--my sister! Was there no other woman to seduce? Speak! speak, wretch!" went on Bertha, seizing the young man's arm and shaking it with violence. "Or did you wish, in deserting me, to take away my only consolation,--the heart of that second self I called a sister?"
"Bertha, listen to me!" said Michel. "Listen to me, I implore you! We are not, thank God, as guilty as you think us. Oh, if you did but know, Bertha!"
"I will hear nothing; I listen only to my heart, which grief is breaking, which despair has crushed; I listen only to the voice within me which says you are a coward! base! My God! my God!" she cried, grasping her hair in her clenched hands, "my God! is this the reward of my tenderness, which was so blind that my eyes refused to see, my ears to hear when they told me that this child, this timid, trembling, wavering, unmanly creature, was not worthy of my love? Oh, poor fool that I have been! I hoped that gratitude would bind him to her who took pity on his weakness, who braved all prejudice and public opinion to drag him from the bog of infamy and make his name, his degraded name, an honorable and honored one!"
"Ah!" cried Michel, rising, "enough! enough!"
"Yes, enough of a degraded name!" repeated Bertha. "That touches you, does it? So much the better; I will say it again and again. Yes, a name soiled and degraded by all that is most odious, cowardly, infamous,--by treachery! Oh, family of betrayers! The son continues in the way of the father; I ought to have expected it."