"I cannot console you; there is consolation neither for you nor for me; there will never be any. Have you thought that someone will always be between us? If your mother's wish is granted— Think! Think!"
But my soul shuddered beneath the sinister light of a single idea. I said: "They all love him already."
I hesitated. I gave Juliana a rapid look. Then, suddenly, lowering my eyes, bending my head, I asked, in a voice that died away on my lips:
"And you, do you love him?"
"Oh! what a question!"
I could not restrain myself from persisting, although I suffered physically as if an open wound were being torn by nails.
"Do you love him?"
"No, no! I have a horror of him."
I felt an instinctive joy, as if I had obtained, by this confession, an assent to my secret idea, and a sort of complicity. But had Juliana answered me sincerely? Or had she told a falsehood out of pity for me?
I was assailed by a cruel and furious desire to persist, to make her confess fully, to penetrate to the very depths of her soul. But her appearance stopped me. I abstained. I now felt no bitterness toward her. I was now drawn toward her by an emotion of gratitude. It seemed to me that the horror she had shudderingly confessed separated her from the creature whom she was nourishing, and brought her closer to me. I felt a desire to make her understand these things, and increase her aversion to the infant to be born, as if against an irreconcilable enemy of us both.