“Come,” repeated she, “I’m married, so I can’t bear you any ill will.”
He took her on his knees, and exclaimed:
“But it’s you who I love!”
And he spoke truly. At that moment he loved her and only her, and with an absolute and infinite passion. All his new intrigue, the two months spent in pursuing another, were as naught. He again beheld himself in that narrow room, coming and kissing Marie on the neck, behind Jule’s back, ever finding her willing, with her passive gentleness. This was true happiness, how was it that he had disdained it? Regret almost broke his heart. He still wished for her, and he felt that, if he had her no more, he would be eternally miserable.
“Let me be,” murmured she, trying to release herself. “You are not reasonable, you will end by grieving me. Now that you love another, what is the use of continuing to torment me?”
She defended herself thus, in her gentle and irresolute way, merely feeling a certain repugnance for what did not amuse her much. But he was getting crazy, he squeezed her tighter, he kissed her throat through the coarse material of her woolen dress.
“It’s you who I love, you cannot understand—Listen! on what I hold most sacred, I swear to you I do not lie. Tear my heart open and see. Oh! I implore you, be kind!”
Marie, paralyzed by the will of this man, made a movement as though to take slumbering Lilitte into the next apartment; but he prevented her, fearing that she would awaken the child. The peacefulness of the house, at that hour of the night, filled the little room with a sort of buzzing silence. Suddenly the lamp went down, and they were about to find themselves in the dark, when Marie, rising, was just in time to wind it up again.
Tears filled her eyes, and she remained sad, though still without anger. When he left her, he felt dissatisfied, he would have liked to have gone to sleep. But the other one would be there shortly, he must wait for her, and this thought weighed terribly on him; after having spent feverish nights in concocting extravagant plans for getting her to visit him in his room, he longed for something to happen which would prevent her from coming up. Perhaps she would once again fail to keep her word. It was a hope with which he scarcely dared delude himself.