"In three hours!"
"I know where those roses were gathered," said Sulpice tenderly. "It was at the foot of the window where we leaned elbow to elbow and dreamed."
"Yes," Adrienne answered, in a broken voice whose sound was like that which might have been given out by the vase had it been struck and shattered. "We had lovely dreams! The reality has indeed belied them!"
"Adrienne!" he murmured.
She made no reply.
He tried to approach her, feeling ashamed as he thought that he had similarly wished to approach Marianne.
She instinctively drew back.
"You remember," she said coldly, "that one day when we were speaking about divorce, I told you that there was a very simple way of divorce? It was never to see each other again, never, to be nothing more to each other from the day on which confidence should die?—You have deceived me, it is done. I am a stranger to you! If I were a mother, I should have duties to fulfil. I would not have failed therein. I would have endured everything for a son!—Nothing is left to me. I have not even the joy of caressing a child that would have consoled me. I am your widow while you yet live. Well, be it so. You have willed it, there, then, is divorce!"
For the third time since Adrienne had learned everything, he tried to stammer the word pardon. He felt it was useless. This sensitive being had withdrawn within herself and wrapped herself, as with a cloak, in all her outraged chastity. He could only humiliate himself without softening her. All Adrienne's deceived trustfulness and insulted love strengthened her in her determination never to forgive.
She would go.