"Tyrant! I cannot promise you not to think. I have a good mind to be angry with you. You are positively ungrateful. You shut me up in a room all by myself, where I quietly remain, the very soul of discretion--you did not so much as hear me breathe--only forgetting myself once when my feelings overcame me, and you don't give me one word of praise. Tell me instantly, sir, that I am a brave little woman."
"You are the personification of rashness."
"How ungrateful! Did you think of me, Christian, while I was locked up there?"
"My thoughts did not wander from you for a moment."
"If you had only given me a handful of these roseleaves so that I might have buried my face in them and imagined I was not tied to a man who loves another woman than his wife! You seem amazed. Do you forget already what has passed between you? If it had happened that I loved him, after his confession to-night I should hate him. But it is indifferent to me upon whom he has set his affections--with all my heart I pity the unfortunate creature he loves. She need not fear me; I shall not harm her. You got at the heart of his secret when you asked him if a woman was involved in it; and you compelled him to confess that his honour--and of course hers; mine does not matter--was at stake in his miserable love-affair. He loves a woman who is not his wife; with all his evasions he could not help admitting it. And this is the man who holds his head so high above all other men--the man who was never known to commit an indiscretion! Of course he must keep his secret close--of course he could not speak of it to his friend, whom he tries to hoodwink with professions and twisted words! He married me, I suppose, to satisfy his vanity; he wanted the world to see that old as he was, grave as he was, no woman could resist him. And I allowed myself to be persuaded by worldly friends! Is it not a proof of my never having loved him, that, instead of hating him when in my hearing he confesses he loves another, I simply laugh at him and despise him? I should not shed a tear over him if he died to-night. He has insulted me--and what woman ever forgets or forgives an insult? But he has done me a good service, too, and I thank him. How sleepy I am! Good-night. My minute is up, and I cannot stay longer; I must think of my complexion. Goodnight, Christian; that is all I came to say."
CHAPTER XIV
[THE ADVOCATE FEARS HE HAS CREATED A MONSTER]
The Advocate did not immediately return to his study. Darkness was more congenial to his mood, and he spent a few minutes in the gardens of the villa. Although he had stated to Christian Almer that the conversation which had passed between them had been of benefit to him, he felt, now that he was alone, that there was much in it to give rise to disturbing thought and conjecture. He had not foreseen the difficulty, in social intercourse, of avoiding the subject uppermost in his mind. A morbid self-consciousness, at present in its germ, and from which he had hitherto been entirely free, seemed to unlock all roads in its direction. It was, as it were, the converging-point of all matters, even the most trivial, affecting himself. Having put the seal upon his resolution with respect to Gautran's confession, he became painfully aware that he had committed himself to a line of action from which he could not now recede without laying himself open to such suspicion, from friend and foe alike, as might fatally injure his reputation. He was a lawyer, and he knew what powerful use he could make of such a weapon against any man, high or low. If it could be turned against another it could be turned against himself. He must not, therefore, waver in his resolution. Only his conscience could call him to account. Well, he would reckon with that. It was a passive, not an active accuser. Gautran would seek some new locality, in which he would be lost to sight. As a matter of common prudence, it was more than likely he would change his name. The suspicion which attached itself to him, and the horror with which he was regarded in the neighbourhood in which he had lived, would compel him to fly to other pastures. In this, and in the silence of time, lay the Advocate's safety, for every day that passed would weaken the fever of excitement created by the trial. After a few weeks, if it even happened that Gautran were insanely to make a public declaration of his guilt, and to add to this confession a statement that the Advocate was aware of it during the trial, by whom would he be believed? Certainly not by the majority of the better classes of the people; and in the event of such a contingency, he could quote with effect the poet's words: "Be thou chaste as ice, and pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny."
So much, then, for himself: but he was more than ever anxious and ill at ease regarding Christian Almer. The secret which his friend dared not divulge to him was evidently of the gravest import--probably as terrible in its way as that which lay heavily on the Advocate's soul; and the profound mystery in which it was wrapt invested it with a significance so unusual, even in the Advocate's varied experience of human nature, that he could not keep from brooding upon it. Was it a secret in which honour was involved? He could not bring himself to believe that Almer could be guilty of a dishonourable act--but a man might be dragged into a difficulty against his will, and might have a burden of shame unexpectedly thrust upon him which he could not openly fling off without disgrace. And yet--and yet--that he should be so careful in concealing it from the knowledge of the truest of friends--it was inexplicable. Ponder as long as he might, the Advocate could arrive at no explanation of it, nor could his logical mind obtain the slightest clue to the mystery.
The cool air in the gardens refreshed him, and he walked about, always within view of the lights in his study windows, with his head uncovered. It was during the first five minutes of his solitude that an impression stole upon him that he was not alone. He searched the avenues, he listened, he asked aloud: