Of course, I should have continued in this manner; I saw how she staggered. I saw how with trembling fingers, almost falling, she was looking for her veil; I saw that another word of courageous truth, and the terrible vision would vanish never to appear again. But some stranger within me—not I—not I—uttered the following absurd, ridiculous phrase, in which, despite its chilliness, rang so much jealousy and hopeless sorrow:
“Madam, you have deceived me. I don’t know you. Perhaps you entered the wrong door. I suppose your husband and your children are waiting for you. Please, my servant will take you down to the carriage.”
Could I think that these words, uttered in the same stern and cold voice, would have such a strange effect upon the woman’s heart? With a cry, all the bitter passion of which I could not describe, she threw herself before me on her knees, exclaiming:
“So you do love me!”
Forgetting that our life had already been lived, that we were old, that all had been ruined and scattered like dust by Time, and that it can never return again; forgetting that I was grey, that my shoulders were bent, that the voice of passion sounds strangely when it comes from old lips—I burst into impetuous reproaches and complaints.
“Yes, I did deceive you!” her deathly pale lips uttered. “I knew that you were innocent—”
“Be silent. Be silent.”
“Everybody laughed at me—even your friends, your mother whom I despised for it—all betrayed you. Only I kept repeating: ‘He is innocent!’”
Oh, if this woman knew what she was doing to me with her words! If the trumpet of the angel, announcing the day of judgment, had resounded at my very ear, I would not have been so frightened as now. What is the blaring of a trumpet calling to battle and struggle to the ear of the brave? It was as if an abyss had opened at my feet. It was as if an abyss had opened before me, and as though blinded by lightning, as though dazed by a blow, I shouted in an outburst of wild and strange ecstasy:
“Be silent! I—”