I tried to persuade her to go home and have supper with her mother, but she was afraid of the daylight; moreover, her heart sank at the thought of the necessary explanation. She had eaten nothing since two o'clock, and the melancholy prospect of going to bed supperless aroused the wild beast hunger in her.
She had grown up in a wealthy home, and had been used to every kind of luxury; she had no idea what poverty meant, and consequently she was completely unstrung. I, who had been familiar with hunger from childhood, suffered torture to see her in such a desperate position. I ransacked my cupboard, but could find nothing; I searched the drawers of my writing-table, and there, amongst all sorts of keep-sakes, faded flowers, old love-letters, discoloured ribbons, I found two sweets which I had kept in remembrance of a funeral. I offered them to her just as they were, wrapped in black paper and tinfoil. A distressing banquet indeed, these sweets in their mourning dress!
Depressed, humiliated, apprehensive, I raged and thundered furiously against all respectable women whose doors were closed to us, who would have none of us.
"Why this hostility and contempt? Had we committed a crime? Surely not; it was but a question of a straightforward divorce; we were complying with all the rules and requirements of the law."
"We have been behaving too correctly," she said, trying to comfort herself. "The world is but a pack of knaves. It winks at open, shameless adultery, but condemns divorce. A high standard of morality indeed!"
We were agreed on the subject. But the facts remained. The crime continued to hang over our heads, which drooped under its weight.
I felt like a boy who has robbed a bird's nest. The mother had flown away, the little ones lay prostrate, chirping plaintively, bereft of the protecting warmth of the mother's wings.
And the father? He was left desolate in the ruined home. I pictured him of a Sunday evening, an evening like this, when the family assembles round the fire-place, alone in the drawing-room, with the silenced piano; alone in the dining-room, eating his solitary dinner; alone always....
"Oh, no, nothing of the kind!" she interrupted my musings; "you are quite mistaken! You would be much more likely to find him lounging on the comfortable sofa at Matilde's brother-in-law's; he has had a good dinner with plenty of wine, and is gently squeezing the hand of my poor, dear, libelled little cousin, laughing at the outrageous stories told of his wife's ill-conduct—his wife, who refused to countenance his infidelity. And both of them, surrounded and upheld by the sympathy and applause of this hypocritical world, are eager to throw the first stone at us."
Her words set me thinking, and after a while I expressed the opinion that the Baron had led us by the nose; that he had schemed to rid himself of a troublesome wife, so as to be able to marry again, and had managed to secure her dowry, in spite of the law.