And a vague terror was mingled with her remorse.
The first apprehension which strikes brutally against the edifice of illusions of the woman who has committed a fault, is the anxiety regarding the opinion of the man who has incited her to that fault; I am speaking, be it understood, of one in whom there remains the feeling of modesty, without which she is not a woman, but an unclean female.
When she awakes from her short delirium, she says to herself:
—What will he think of me? What will he believe? Will he not despise me?
And she has good grounds for apprehension; for often (I believe I have said so already) the contempt of her accomplice is all that remains to her.
And then, what man is there who, after having at length possessed illegitimately the wife or the maiden so long pursued and desired, does not say to himself in the morning, when his fever is dissipated, when the bandage which hitherto has covered the eyes of love suppliant, is unbound from the eyes of love satisfied, when the unknown which has so many charms, has become the known that we despise, when of the rosy, inflated illusion there remains but a yellow skeleton: "She has given herself to me trustingly and artlessly; but might she not have given herself with equal facility to another, if I had not been there? for in fact … what devil…?"
A strange question, but one which unavoidably takes up its abode in the heart, and waits to come forth and be present one day on the lips, at the time when Satiety gives the last kick to the last house of cards erected by Pleasure.
And it is thus that after doing everything to draw a woman into our own fall, we are discontented with her for her sacrifice and for her love.
For there comes a moment when the angel for whom one would have given one's life, the divinity for whom one would have sacrificed country, family, fortune, future, is no more than a common mistress, ranked in the ordinary lot with the rest, and for whom one would hesitate to spend half-a-sovereign.
Have you not chanced sometimes to follow with an envious eye, on some fresh morning in spring or on a lovely autumn evening, the solitary walk of a loving couple? They go slowly, hand in hand, avoiding notice, selecting the shady and secret paths, or the darkest walks in the woods. He is handsome, young and strong; she is pretty and charming, pale with emotion, or blushing with modesty. What things they murmur as they lean one towards another, what sweet projects of an endless future, what oaths which ought to be eternal, sworn untiringly, lip on lip.