“Not alone, perhaps. I think you are right, sweetheart. I will arrange that somehow. Now that we have our understanding——”
“I wish,” said Madeleine steadily, “that you would leave Paris.”
The other recoiled.
“What!” he screamed. “What! Leave Paris? Mon Dieu! This is more than I can stand.” He leaned back in his chair and wiped the sweat from his face. “I think you are ill,” he said. “To hear you, anyone would think that you did not care,” he added desperately.
“I do not care,” said Madeleine.
The young man started as though she had stabbed him with a knife. Then he went very white.
“I do not care,” she repeated. “I do not want to hurt you, but you have made a mistake. Jean wrote to me, you know, and said you were very sad. He said you would not come to see me because—because you could not forget. I showed the letter to Pierre, and we agreed that we must be kind to you. We thought, perhaps, when you saw how—how happy we were, you would join in our happiness, and so become cured. Instead, you have grown worse. More—you have involved me terribly. I have tried to be kind, and you have mistaken my kindness for something else. It is really very difficult, René, but, you see, we are not at all in the same boat. I ought, of course, I see now, to have told you at once. But I didn’t, I didn’t want to hurt you, and—it was doing no harm. It is an awkward thing, you know, to tell any man—let alone an old friend. But now it is getting beyond . . . beyond a joke. . . .”
René winced at the word piteously. With white lips and a bleeding heart, Madeleine struggled on.
“You see, I have not told Pierre. . . . And I do not want Pierre, my husband, to make the same mistake. I do not think that he would, but you never know. And if he did, it would be very awkward for me. I do not know how I should show him that he was wrong. . . .
“And so, you see, my friend, that when I said that the hours we spend together are of sharp steel, I was perfectly right. They pierce your heart, I fear, and they—they—embarrass me. . . . Don’t look like that, René! I tell you, I hoped——”