"Yes, for your sake."
She half-closed her eyes, and the light of a smile trembled on her face. I felt that I had never been loved as at that instant.
After a pause, she said, regarding me with humid eyes:
"Thank you."
The tone, the sentiment expressed, recalled to me another "thank you," that she had said at another time, the morning of her convalescence, the morning of my first crime.
XXVII.
Thus I recommenced at the Badiola my invariably sad life, unrelieved by any notable incident, the hours dragging along on the sun-dial, and the feeling of desolation aggravated by the heavy monotony of the chirp of the crickets in the elms. Hora est benefaciendi!
And, in my mind, there alternated the usual effervescences, the usual inertias, sarcasms, the usual vain aspirations, contradictory crises, abundance and dryness. And, more than once, reflecting on that gray, neutral, ordinary fluid, and omnipotent thing called life, I thought: "Who knows? Man is, above all, an animal who adapts himself. There is neither turpitude nor pain to which, in the end, he does not accustom himself. Perhaps in the long run I shall also become used to it. Who knows?"
I sterilized myself by dint of irony. "Who knows if Filippo Arborio's son will not be, so to say, my very picture. Then the arrangement would only be easier." I thought of the cynical laugh that had been provoked in me one day when, in the presence of a married couple, I had heard them refer to a baby who, I knew for a certainty, was the fruit of adultery, as, "It's just like his father!" And in reality the resemblance was striking, from the influence of that mysterious law known to physiologists' as "heredity by influence." Often a woman married a second time, brings into the world, some years after the death of her first husband, sons who have every feature of the dead husband, and who do not resemble at all their real father.
"It is possible, therefore, that Raymond resemble me, and appear to be a veritable Hermil," I thought. "It might happen that I am warmly congratulated upon having so vigorously impressed upon the heir the seal of my race! And suppose my mother's and brother's expectations are not fulfilled? Suppose Juliana gives birth to a third daughter?"