Ah! this thought robbed her of her reason! In that case she would be like the most abject of all the women who had ever been in her circumstances! She reasoned no further.
A nervous tremor shook her. Her arm contracted, forcing her to shut her fists.
"Anything! Anything! Misery, grief, scandal! Anything, even the abandonment of Antonio—but not infamy!"
She flung her arms over the bed, hid her face, bit, gnawed the coverlet, and wept.
She wept and she remembered. Once before she had flung herself on her bed and had wept with rage and grief. But Antonio had come, and she had kissed him with treason in her heart. It was she who had made infamous this weak and loving man, the conquest, the prey, of her superior force.
He had degraded himself for her, and now she was lowering him still more, suspecting that he would hesitate a single moment if she were to say to him, "I don't want all this you are giving me! Let us rise up out of the mud; let us re-make our life."
"If he lies, it will be for me, because he will not wish to destroy me. Oh! he is a rotten fruit! But I—I am the worm which is consuming him!"
But if, after all, she were deceiving herself? If it were not true? At moments this ray of joy flashed across her mind; then all the former darkness returned.
To know! to know! that was the first thing! Why cause him useless distress? The first thing was to make certain, and then——she would see!
The tears did her good. They were like a summer shower, clearing and refreshing her mind. She got up, washed her eyes, sat down to read the newspaper. She had to do something. But the first words which struck her and claimed her attention were these—