"This is not yours," he said, untying the kerchief which concealed Madame Delmare's hair.
It was untouched, and fell over her shoulders in all its splendor. But she made a gesture as if to push him away and said, still pointing to the hair:
"Don't you recognize this? Did you never admire, never caress it? Has the damp night air robbed it of all its fragrance? Have you not a thought, a tear for her who wore this ring?"
Raymon sank upon a chair; Noun's locks fell from his trembling hand. So much painful excitement had exhausted him. He was a man of choleric temper, whose blood flowed rapidly, whose nerves were easily and deeply irritated. He shivered from head to foot and fell in a swoon on the floor.
When he came to himself, Madame Delmare was on her knees beside him, weeping copiously and asking his forgiveness; but Raymon no longer loved her.
"You have inflicted a horrible wound on me," he said; "a wound which it is not in your power to cure. You will never restore the confidence I had in your heart; that is evident to me. You have shown me how vindictive and cruel your heart can be. Poor Noun! poor unhappy girl! It was she whom I treated badly, not you; it was she who had the right to avenge herself, and she did not. She took her own life in order to leave me the future. She sacrificed herself to my repose. You are not the woman to have done as much, madame! Give me her hair; it is mine—it belongs to me; it is all that remains to me of the only woman who ever loved me truly. Unhappy Noun! you were worthy of a better love! And you, madame, dare to reproach me with her death; you, whom I loved so well that I forgot her—that I defied the ghastly torture of remorse; you who, on the faith of a kiss, have led me across that river—across that bridge—alone, with terror at my side, pursued by the infernal illusions of my crime! And when you discover with what a frantic passion I love you, you bury your woman's nails in my heart, seeking there another drop of blood which may still be made to flow for you! Ah! when I spurned so devoted a love to take up with so savage a passion as yours, I was no less mad than guilty."
Madame Delmare did not reply. Pale and motionless, with dishevelled hair and staring eyes, she moved Raymon to pity. He took her hand.
"And yet," he said, "this love I feel for you is so blind that, in spite of myself, I can still forget the past and the present—the sin that blasted my life and the crime you have just committed. So love me, and I will forgive you."
Madame Delmare's despair rekindled desire and pride in her lover's heart. When he saw how dismayed she was at the thought of losing his love—how humble before him, how resigned to accept his decrees for the future by way of atonement for the past—he remembered what his intentions had been when he eluded Ralph's vigilance, and he realized all the advantages of his position. He pretended to be absorbed in a melancholy, sombre reverie for some moments; he hardly responded to Indiana's tears and caresses. He waited until her heart should break and overflow in sobs, until she should realize all the horrors of desertion—until she should have exhausted all her strength in heart-rending emotion; and then, when he saw her at his feet, fainting, utterly worn out, awaiting death at a word from him, he seized her in his arms with convulsive passion and strained her to his heart. She yielded like a weak child; she abandoned her lips to him unresistingly. She was almost dead.
But suddenly, as if waking from a dream, she snatched herself away from his burning caresses, rushed to the end of the room where Sir Ralph's portrait hung on the panel; and, as if she would place herself under the protection of that grave personage with the unruffled brow and tranquil lips, she shrank back against the portrait, wild-eyed, quivering from head to foot, in the clutches of a strange fear. It was this that made Raymon think that she had been deeply moved in his arms—that she was afraid of herself—that she was his. He ran to her; drew her by force from her retreat, and told her that he had come with the purpose of keeping his promises, but that her cruel treatment of him had absolved him from his oath.