Palmer talked for a long while in this strain, with a heartfelt earnestness for which Thérèse was unprepared. She tried to repel his confidence; but this resistance was, in Palmer's eyes, a last remnant of mental disease which she must stamp out herself. She felt that Palmer spoke the truth, but she felt also that he proposed to assume a terrible task.
"No," she said, "I am not afraid of myself. I do not love Laurent, and I can never love him again; but what about society, your mother, your country, your social standing, the honor of your name? I am debased, as you have said; I am conscious of it. Ah! Palmer, do not urge me so! I am too dismayed by the thought of what you will have to defy for my sake!"
On the next day, and every day thereafter, Palmer pressed his suit vigorously. He gave Thérèse no time to breathe. He was alone with her from morning till night, and redoubled the force of his will to persuade her. Palmer was a man of heart and of impulse; we shall see later whether Thérèse was justified in hesitating. What disturbed her was the precipitation with which Palmer acted, and sought to force her to act by pledging herself to him by a promise.
"You are afraid of my reflections," she said; "therefore you have not so much confidence in me as you boast of having."
"I believe in your word," he replied. "Do I not prove that by asking you for it? But I am not obliged to believe that you love me, for you give me no answer on that point, and you are right. You do not know as yet what name to give to your friendly feeling. For my own part, I know that what I feel is love, and I am not one of those who hesitate to read their own hearts. Love with me is very logical. It fervently craves its object. Therefore it seeks to avoid the ill-fortune to which you may expose it by indulging in reflections or reveries, wherein, mentally diseased as you are, you may not distinguish your real interests."
Thérèse felt almost hurt when Palmer spoke of her interests. He seemed to her altogether too self-sacrificing, and she could not bear to have him think her capable of accepting so much from him without seeking to reciprocate. She suddenly felt ashamed of herself in that contest of generosity in which Palmer placed himself absolutely at her discretion, demanding only that she should accept his name, his fortune, his protection, and the affection of his whole life. He gave everything, and, as his only recompense, begged her to think of herself.
Thereupon, hope returned to Thérèse's heart. This man, whom she had always considered a practical, matter-of-fact mortal, and who still artlessly affected that character, revealed himself to her in so utterly unexpected a light, that her mind was vividly impressed, and as it were, revivified, in the midst of its death-agony. It was like a ray of sunlight bursting in upon darkness which she thought was destined to be everlasting. At the very moment when, rendered unjust by her despair, she was on the point of cursing love, he forced her to believe in love, and to look upon her misfortune as an accident for which Heaven was prepared to compensate her. Palmer, who was a handsome man of a cold and regular type of beauty, became more and more transfigured every moment in the astonished, uncertain, melting eyes of the woman he loved. His shyness, which imparted to his first advances a touch of roughness, gave place to effusive warmth, and, although he expressed himself less poetically than Laurent, he was none the less persuasive on that account.
Thérèse discovered genuine enthusiasm beneath that somewhat rough shell of obstinacy, and she could not refrain from smiling with emotion when she saw the vehemence with which he coolly pursued his project of saving her. She felt deeply touched, and allowed him to extort the promise he demanded.
Suddenly she received a letter in a handwriting that she did not recognize, it was so changed. Indeed, she had difficulty in deciphering the signature. She succeeded, however, with Palmer's help, in reading these words:
"I have played and lost; I had a mistress, she deceived me, and I killed her. I have taken poison. I am dying. Adieu, Thérèse.
"LAURENT."