I took her hand; I said to her:
"You have comforted me a little. I thank you. You understand——"
And I added, masking my homicidal intention by a Christian hope:
"There is a Providence. Who knows? The day of deliverance will come, perhaps. You understand me. Who knows? Pray to God."
It was a presage of death for the infant to be born; it was a wish. And, by inducing Juliana to pray that it should come to pass, I was preparing her for the funereal event, I obtained from her a sort of moral complicity. I ended by thinking:
"If, as a result of my words, the suggestion of crime should come to her, and, gradually, become strong enough to actuate her? Certainly it is possible that she may convince herself of the dreadful necessity, that she may elevate herself to the thought of my deliverance, that she may experience a burst of savage energy, that she may accomplish the supreme sacrifice. Did she not repeat just now that she was still ready to die? But her death includes that of her child. Therefore, she is not restrained by any religious prejudice, by the fear of sinning; since she is ready to die, she is ready to commit a double crime, against herself and against maternity. On the other hand, she is convinced that her existence on earth is useful, even indispensable to the persons who love her and whom she loves; and she is also convinced that the existence of the son who is not mine will make an intolerable torture of our lives. She knows, too, that we could draw closer together, that we could, perhaps, in forgiveness and forgetfulness, regain some happiness, that we could hope from time the cure of the wound, if between her and me no intruder interposed. It suffices, then, that she should reflect on all that to rapidly convert a useless desire and an inefficacious prayer into a resolution and an act." I meditated; she also meditated silently, her head lowered, without removing her hand from mine, while deep in the shadows of the great motionless elms.
What were her thoughts? Her brow still retained the pallor of death. With the fall of evening, was another shadow descending upon her, too?
I seemed to see Raymond. But no longer in the form of a perverse and treacherous gray-eyed child; but with the form of a miserable little body, soft and reddish, scarcely breathing, and which the slightest pressure would kill.
The bell at the Badiola sounded the first strokes of the Angelus. Juliana withdrew her hand from mine and made the sign of the cross.
XXI.