"But who knows what you secretly feel in your heart? Poor soul!"
"No, no, Juliana, do not torment yourself! I suffer only for you and because I see you suffer. I forget all when I see you smile. When you feel well, I am happy. You must get well therefore if you love me; you must be quiet, obedient, patient. When you are well, when you are stronger, then ... who knows? God is good."
She murmured:
"My God! have pity on us!"
"In what manner?" I thought. "In causing the Intruder to die?" So, then, we both wished his death. The mother herself saw no other alternative than the destruction of her child. Yes, that was the only alternative. And my memory recalled the brief dialogue that, on one now distant evening, we had had beneath the elms; it recalled the painful confession. "But does she still hate him, now he is born? Can she feel a sincere aversion against the flesh of her flesh? Does she pray God sincerely to take from her the fruit of her own entrails?" I again recalled the wild hope that I had conceived, as if in a flash, on the tragic night. "Suppose the idea of crime should occur to her and gradually become strong enough to influence her."
And I looked at her hands stretched out on the cloth, so pale that they were distinguishable from the sheets only by the azure of their veins.
XXXV.
Now that the invalid's condition was improving daily, a strange sorrow oppressed me. At the bottom of my heart, I did not see the sad days of the alcove pass by without a vague regret. Those mornings, those evenings, those nights, however desolate they were, had their grave sweetness. Every day my labor of charity seemed more beautiful. An abundance of love inundated my soul and submerged at times my sombre thoughts, procured for me at times forgetfulness of the frightful thing, awoke in me some consolatory illusion, some indefinite dream. Shut up in that alcove, I felt at times a sensation similar to that felt in the shadows of lonely chapels: I felt as if in a refuge from the violences of life, from opportunities for sinning. At times it seemed to me that the light curtains separated me from an abyss. I was assailed by sudden and unknown fears. Around me, in the night, I heard the silence of the entire house, and with the eyes of my soul I saw, in the corner of a distant room, by the side of a lighted lamp, the cradle in which slept the intruder, my mother's joy—my heir. A great shudder of horror ran through me, and I remained for a long time influenced by fright, under the sinister light of this single thought. The curtains separated me from an abyss.
But, now that Juliana's condition improved daily, excuses failed me for prolonging her isolation, and by degrees the routine of domestic life invaded the peaceful room. My mother, my brother, Maria, Natalia, Miss Edith, entered more frequently, remained longer. Raymond imposed himself upon the maternal tenderness. It was no longer possible to avoid it, either for Juliana or for me. We had to be lavish with kisses and smiles. We had to feint and artfully dissimulate, to endure the refined cruelties that chance brought to us, to be tortured by slow fire.
Nourished with healthy and substantial milk, surrounded by infinite care, Raymond gradually lost his first repulsive appearance and commenced to grow. He grew whiter, acquired a more clearly defined form, and now kept his gray eyes wide open. But all his movements were odious to me, from the sucking of his lips when applied to the breast to the uncertain movements of his little hands. I could never discover anything attractive in him. I never had a thought of him that was not hateful. When I was obliged to touch him, when my mother brought him to me for a kiss, there ran over my entire skin the same thrill of horror which contact with an unclean animal would have caused me. Every fibre in me revolted, and the violence that I did myself threw me into despair.