She scarcely spoke, and when in the foyer Betsy, noticing her drawn pallid features, asked her whether she was ill, Eline calmly replied in the affirmative—yes, she did feel rather faint. They met the Oudendyks and the van Larens, they laughed and joked, they mentioned Fabrice’s name, but Eline sank down on a bench, like a wounded dove, and listened, nearly swooning with grief, understanding nothing, and with a vacant smile, to something young Hydrecht was saying to her.
In the second part of the concert Fabrice appeared again, and again he was received with jubilant applause, and Eline felt faint and giddy. It was as though the public in their mad admiration were dancing a satanic dance round about the baritone, sullen, red, and coarse as ever. Cold drops of perspiration formed on her brow, her hands felt cold and clammy in their tight-fitting covering of peau de Suède, and her bosom heaved with long, oppressive gasps of breath. At last—thank Heaven!—the concert was over.
Now she was alone, and she could allow herself to be swayed as [[132]]much as she chose by that storm of grief; she need no longer nerve herself to appear bright and smiling before the world; and so, with a sob of anguish, she fell upon her knees before the Persian sofa, and hid her little throbbing head in the embroidery of the soft cushions. With her hands she tried to quench the gasping sobs that shook all her delicate frame, her hair came away from the clasp that held it, and fell about her, a mass of glossy waves.
After the first grief and disappointment, a bitter feeling overmastered her, as though she had, even were it but in her own eyes, rendered herself up to an ineffaceable ridicule, to something that was unworthy and ludicrous, the stain of which would for ever cling to her, and of which the memory would ever continue to haunt her, like a mocking, grinning phantom.
Long she remained thus, her head buried in the cushions, her whole being writhing in the anguish of her despair. First she heard Henk, then Betsy, retiring to their rooms, and then Gerard bolting the street door for the night, the sound re-echoing through the silence that reigned in the house. After that nothing stirred, and Eline felt herself very lonely, as though forsaken in the midst of an ocean of sorrow.
All at once, a thought made her start. Quickly she raised herself up, while the brown hair whirled about her shoulders, and an expression of wounded pride came over her tear-stained face. With a firm resolution and apparent calmness, she approached her writing-desk, and shuddering placed the key in the lock, opened the drawer once so dear to her, and took the album out of it. The red velvet seemed to scorch her fingers like fire. She pushed a chair by the side of the hearth, where the log of wood was still aglow with fire; she opened the book. That, then, was the shrine of her love, the temple of her passion, in which she had worshipped her idol! And as she turned the pages, the procession of portraits passed along: Ben-Saïd, Hamlet, Tell, Luna, Nelusco, Alphonse, de Nevers—for the last time. Roughly, the gilt-edged leaves tearing under her fingers, she removed the photographs, one by one, and without hesitation tore them up in little pieces, cracking the hard cardboard in the angry clutch of her delicate fingers. The pieces she cast into the fire, one by one, and while the flames were curling round them she continued her work of destruction, and threw more and still more into the [[133]]fire, stirring it up with the poker, until it was all burnt out. That was past, that shame was purged.
Then she rose, somewhat relieved. But the torn album, which she still held in her fingers, continued to scorch her hand, and suddenly grasping the velvet book, so roughly that it split her finger-nails, she hurled it, with a subdued cry of abhorrence, far away from her, against the piano, the chords of which gave forth a dull, low sigh.
Then she picked up her cloak and her lace from the floor, smoothed the rumpled silk of her dress, and retired to her bedroom, where a small milk-white night-lamp diffused a soft, sad light around.
And it seemed to her as if anew she was plunged into that ocean of sorrow, that abyss of disappointments, whilst all at once a dispute with Betsy rose to her mind. But a few days ago, in fact, she had declared that Roberts, her music-master, was growing old and was no longer any good, that she intended in future to take lessons of an artiste—of Fabrice, for instance—and Betsy had asked her if she was mad, and had declared that such a thing should certainly not be done in her house.
It need not be now.