“How could it be my child? It is midnight.—He will come to-morrow.”
“Oh! I want him to explain it to me; no one can explain it but he.”
She went to sleep again with her hands piously folded, thus leaving her husband’s head free. Leon, finding it impossible to sleep when his mind was in such a turmoil, feeling sure too that he heard some movement in the adjoining room, rose with the greatest caution, and walking softly and slowly left the room. As he went into the next room he heard the sound—impossible to mistake for any other—of the swift rustle of a silk dress. He followed it from room to room, but the noise fled before him—like some prowling creature that feels itself hunted and flies to hide its prey in the darkness. At last, in a room called the Incroyable, the fugitive dropped exhausted into a seat. There was no lamp or candle in the room, but through a ventilator that opened above one of the doors a broad beam of light fell from the lamp that burned all night in the corner of one of the wide corridors. This partial and somewhat romantic light, though insufficient for reading, for looking at prints, or for examining the china, was enough to recognise, or even to study a face by, if need be.
Pepa Fúcar, for it was she who was flying through her father’s house like a soul in torment, sat huddled in a chair with her face hidden in her clasped hands and bent down almost to her knees. She moaned rather than spoke:
“I know what you are going to say to me—I know; do not speak to me.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” murmured Leon standing in front of her. “How imprudent!”
“I will not come again; I will not do it again. I know I have no right—that it is my fate to be wretched and forsaken—always forsaken. I have nothing to complain of—I can demand no explanations—I dare ask nothing. Even to love you is forbidden.”
Leon sat down by her side. She did not cease her heart-broken rocking, nor take her hands down from her face. But presently, drawing herself up as though to give herself courage, and conquer her heart by trampling it down—and she even stamped on the floor with her feet—she wiped away her tears with her trembling hands, for she was not collected enough to take out her handkerchief—nay, as a matter of fact she had lost it—and said with an effort:
“It is over—I am not wanted here—I feel so much, and I have no rights—I am a disgraced woman. Your wife might strike me and only be applauded for it.... Good-bye.”