"I want you."
"Jenkins!"
"Yes, yes, I know; you have forbidden me ever to utter such words before you; but others than I have said them to you and more too—"
Two nervous steps brought her nearer to the apostle, placed the breathless contempt of her retort close to his broad sensual face.
"And if that were true, villain! If I were unable to defend myself against disgust and ennui, if I did lose my pride, is it for you to mention it? As if you were not the cause of it, as if you had not withered and saddened my life forever."
And three swift, burning words revealed to the horrified Paul de Géry the shocking scene of that assault disguised by loving guardianship, against which the girl's spirit and mind and dreams had had to struggle so long, and which had left her the incurable depression of premature sorrow, a loathing for life almost before it had begun, and that curl at the corner of the lip like the visible wreck of a smile.
"I loved you,—I love you. Passion carries everything before it," Jenkins replied in a hollow voice.
"Very well, love me, if it amuses you. For my part, I hate you, not only because of the injury you have done me and all the beliefs and laudable enthusiasms that you killed in me, but because you represent what are the most execrable and hideous things under the sun to me, hypocrisy and falsehood. Yes, in that worldly masquerade, that mass of false pretences, of grimaces, of cowardly, indecent conventions which have sickened me so thoroughly that I am running away, exiling myself in order to avoid seeing them, that I prefer to them the galleys, the gutter, or to walk the street as a prostitute, your mask, O sublime Jenkins, is the one that inspires the greatest horror in me. You have complicated our French hypocrisy, which consists mainly in smiles and courtesies, with your effusive English handshakes, your cordial and demonstrative loyalty. Everybody is taken in by it. People speak of 'honest Jenkins,' 'excellent, worthy Jenkins.' But I know you, my man, and for all your fine motto, so insolently displayed on your envelopes, on your seal, your cuff-buttons, your hat-buckles and the panels of your carriages, I always see the knave that you are, showing everywhere around the edges of your disguise."
Her voice hissed between her clenched teeth with an indescribably savage intonation; and Paul expected some frantic outburst on the part of Jenkins, rebelling against such a storm of insults. But no. That exhibition of hatred and contempt on the part of the woman he loved evidently caused him more sorrow than anger; for he answered low, in a tone of heart-broken gentleness:—
"Ah! you are cruel. If you knew how you hurt me! Hypocrite, yes, it is true; but a man isn't born that way, he becomes so perforce, in face of the harsh vicissitudes of life. When you have the wind against you and want to go ahead, you tack. I tacked. Charge it to my miserable beginnings, to an unsuccessful entrance on the stage, and agree at least that one thing in me has never lied: my passion! Nothing has succeeded in repelling it, neither your contempt, nor your insults, nor all that I read in your eyes, which have never once smiled on me in all these years. And it is my passion which gives me strength, even after what I have just heard, to tell you why I am here. Listen. You informed me one day that you needed a husband, some one to watch over you while you were at work, to relieve poor, worn-out Crenmitz from sentry duty. Those were your own words, which tore my heart then because I was not free. Now everything is changed. Will you marry me, Felicia?"