And with a nervous laugh, which showed all her white teeth, she answered:
“As naked as a babe!”
They both shivered at their own reckless talk.
He was filled with sadness at the sight of this lovely form, whose beauties he could so well imagine; while she, just about to enter the married state as one might throw oneself over a precipice, felt a kind of voluptuous faintness at thus treading on the brink.
He was silent, but in his tense features she read her own power. She even dared to take his hand and said, in Italian to hide her boldness, “Io vi amo.”
And Jean forgot about Marcel and the rendez-vous. But his nature was really refined, loyal, and almost reserved, despite her influence upon it because of her expressed admiration for him and her own fascinating allurements. And so, in love as he was for the moment, he did not say the words that Isabelle was hoping to hear.
“So you would give up Monsieur Landeau for me?” were his words.
She thought him rather dense, and concluded hastily that his impertinences were only external and his boldness mere bravado. But he pleased her the more for that. She herself retained in that passionate heart of hers a certain childishness, which was touched to sympathy by the unexpected virtue which she found in him. But she promised herself to play a much more important part in the drama. Soon recovering from her surprise, she answered:
“I should give up nothing at all. Why should that middle-aged man stand in our way?” And again she laughed, an ambiguous laugh. He understood, and in spite of himself he blushed—which annoyed her.
Behind the plants they saw Alice get up. The girl crossed the drawing-room wide-eyed, as though she were walking in her sleep. She was wearing a white linen dress, which suited her fair beauty. Isabelle took in the details of the toilette like an inventory. Made cruel by her inspection, she murmured: “That stuff was expensive and the cut is perfect. Could you offer me anything like that after the ceremony?”