"Go; but let her rest to-night, let her remain quiet. I am going downstairs. I'll come up again."
"Thank you, mother."
I touched her forehead with my lips.
"Dear boy!" she murmured, as she withdrew.
I stopped on the threshold of the door opposite, turned around, and watched her gentle and still erect figure disappear.
I felt an indescribable sensation, similar, without doubt, to that which I should have felt had the entire house collapsed about me in an explosion. In me, about me, all fell, sank irresistibly into an abyss.
XI.
Who has not at times heard some unfortunate being say: "In one hour I lived ten years." It is something inconceivable. Well, I understand it. During that short interview with my mother, so peaceful apparently, had I not lived ten years? The acceleration of the inner life of man is the most prodigious and frightful phenomenon there is in the world.
What must be done? I was seized by frenzied desires to flee far away in the night, or to run to my room and lock myself in, to remain alone to contemplate my ruin, to review its extent. But I was able to resist. It was on that night that the superiority of my nature was revealed, was able to shake off every atrocious torture of my most virile faculties. And I thought: "It is absolutely necessary that none of my actions should seem singular or inexplicable, either to my mother or to my brother, or anyone else in this house."
I stopped before the door of Juliana's room, powerless to repress the physical trembling that shook me. But the sound of a footstep in the corridor determined me to resolutely enter.