But all at once she started and began to tremble. Gerard was entering the room.
“What! are you here the first, my dear?” he exclaimed. “I thought that I myself was ten minutes before the time! And you’ve ordered some tea and are waiting for me!”
He forced a smile as he spoke, striving to display the same delight at seeing her as he had shown in the early golden days of their passion. But at heart he was much embarrassed, and he shuddered at the thought of the awful scene which he could foresee.
She had at last risen and raised her veil. And looking at him she stammered: “Yes, I found myself at liberty earlier than I expected.... I feared some impediment might arise... and so I came.”
Then, seeing how handsome and how affectionate he still looked, she could not restrain her passion. All her skilful arguments, all her fine resolutions, were swept away. Her flesh irresistibly impelled her towards him; she loved him, she would keep him, she would never surrender him to another. And she wildly flung her arms around his neck.
“Oh! Gerard, Gerard! I suffer too cruelly; I cannot, I cannot bear it! Tell me at once that you will not marry her, that you will never marry her!”
Her voice died away in a sob, tears started from her eyes. Ah! those tears which she had sworn she would never shed! They gushed forth without cessation, they streamed from her lovely eyes like a flood of the bitterest grief.
“My daughter, O God! What! you would marry my daughter! She, here, on your neck where I am now! No, no, such torture is past endurance, it must not be, I will not have it!”
He shivered as he heard that cry of frantic jealousy raised by a mother who now was but a woman, maddened by the thought of her rival’s youth, those five and twenty summers which she herself had left far behind. For his part, on his way to the assignation, he had come to what he thought the most sensible decision, resolving to break off the intercourse after the fashion of a well-bred man, with all sorts of fine consolatory speeches. But sternness was not in his nature. He was weak and soft-hearted, and had never been able to withstand a woman’s tears. Nevertheless, he endeavoured to calm her, and in order to rid himself of her embrace, he made her sit down upon the sofa. And there, beside her, he replied: “Come, be reasonable, my dear. We came here to have a friendly chat, did we not? I assure you that you are greatly exaggerating matters.”
But she was determined to obtain a more positive answer from him. “No, no!” she retorted, “I am suffering too dreadfully, I must know the truth at once. Swear to me that you will never, never marry her!”