She gave the sigh of a woman who is about to faint, a painful sigh from the very depths of her bosom, and then began to choke and gasp without being able to speak.
Seeing that she did not say anything, he continued: "You cannot imagine how much I suffered before coming to this resolution. But I have neither position nor money. I am alone, lost in Paris. I needed beside me someone who above all would be an adviser, a consoler, and a stay. It is a partner, an ally, that I have sought, and that I have found."
He was silent, hoping that she would reply, expecting furious rage, violence, and insults. She had placed one hand on her heart as though to restrain its throbbings, and continued to draw her breath by painful efforts, which made her bosom heave spasmodically and her head nod to and fro. He took her other hand, which was resting on the arm of the chair, but she snatched it away abruptly. Then she murmured, as though in a state of stupefaction: "Oh, my God!"
He knelt down before her, without daring to touch her, however, and more deeply moved by this silence than he would have been by a fit of anger, stammered out: "Clo! my darling Clo! just consider my situation, consider what I am. Oh! if I had been able to marry you, what happiness it would have been. But you are married. What could I do? Come, think of it, now. I must take a place in society, and I cannot do it so long as I have not a home. If you only knew. There are days when I have felt a longing to kill your husband."
He spoke in his soft, subdued, seductive voice, a voice which entered the ear like music. He saw two tears slowly gather in the fixed and staring eyes of his mistress and then roll down her cheeks, while two more were already formed on the eyelids.
He murmured: "Do not cry, Clo; do not cry, I beg of you. You rend my very heart."
Then she made an effort, a strong effort, to be proud and dignified, and asked, in the quivering tone of a woman about to burst into sobs: "Who is it?"
He hesitated a moment, and then understanding that he must, said:
"Madeleine Forestier."
Madame de Marelle shuddered all over, and remained silent, so deep in thought that she seemed to have forgotten that he was at her feet. And two transparent drops kept continually forming in her eyes, falling and forming again.