"I understand perfectly well what you want," he said. "You demand that I repent, and atone for my wrong-doing. Well, don't you see that I abhor the thought of it, and have I not expiated it sufficiently by going mad for eight or ten days? You desire tears and oaths as formerly? What is the use? you would not believe in them again. My future conduct is what is to be judged, and you see that I am not afraid of the future, since I cling to you. You see, my dear Thérèse, you are a child, too, and you know I often called you one when I saw you pretending to sulk. Do you think you can persuade me that you no longer love me, when you have just passed a whole month shut up here, and for twenty days and nights of that month did not go to bed and hardly left my room? Can't I see, from the dark rings about your lovely eyes, that you would have died at the task if it had been necessary? A woman doesn't do such things as that for a man she no longer loves!"
Thérèse dared not utter the fatal words. She hoped that Palmer would come and interrupt the tête-à-tête, and that she could avoid a scene that might result seriously for the convalescent. But it was impossible; he placed himself in front of the door to prevent her from going out, dropped at her feet, and grovelled there in despair.
"Great God!" she exclaimed, "is it possible that you think me cruel enough, capricious enough, to refuse to say a word that I could say to you? But I cannot say that one because it would not be the truth. Love is at an end between us."
Laurent rose in a passion. He could not understand that perhaps he had killed that love in which he had pretended not to believe.
"Is it Palmer?" he cried, smashing a tea-pot, from which he had mechanically poured himself a draught; "it is he, is it? Tell me, I insist upon it, I insist upon the truth! It will kill me, I know, but I don't choose to be deceived!"
"Deceived!" echoed Thérèse, taking his hands to prevent him from tearing them with his nails; "deceived! what sort of a word is that for you to use? Do I belong to you, pray? have we not been strangers to each other since the first night you passed away from home at Genoa, after telling me that I was your torment and your executioner? wasn't that four months ago and more? and do you think that length of time, without an indication of change on your part, was not enough to make me mistress of myself once more?"
And as she saw that Laurent, instead of being exasperated by her frankness, grew calmer, and listened with eager interest, she continued:
"If you do not understand the feeling that brought me to your sick-bed, and that has kept me beside you until to-day, to complete your cure by a mother's care, it is because you never understood my heart. This heart, Laurent," she said, putting her hand to her breast, "may be neither so proud nor so ardent as yours; but, as you yourself used often to say, it always remains in the same place. What it has loved it cannot cease to love; but, do not mistake my meaning, it is not love as you understand the word, it is not such love as you once aroused in me and as you are mad enough to expect again. Neither my passions nor my reason belong to you now. I have resumed possession of my body and my will; my confidence and my enthusiastic regard can never be restored to you. I am at liberty to bestow them upon whoever may deserve them, upon Palmer, if I choose, and you have no right to object, you who went to him one morning and said:
"'Pray go and console Thérèse; you will do me a favor.'"
"That is true! that is true!" cried Laurent, clasping his trembling hands; "I did say that! I had forgotten it, but I remember it now!"