“I did not understand you,” he replied, shaking his head. “Look, at this very moment your eyes are terrified. One would think that your nightmare was still going on.”
He came nearer to her and said slowly: “You need a long rest, my poor child, and that is what I want to suggest to you. This morning I asked for leave and we will go away. I swear to you that I will not say a single word that might offend you. What is more, I will not say a word about that secret which you ought to have confided to me, since it belongs as much to me as to you. I will not even try to read it in the depths of your eyes in which it hides itself and in which I have so often tried, by force I confess, to find the key to this insoluble problem. I will leave your eyes alone, Aurelie. I will never look at you again. That is my definite promise. But come with me, poor child, you rack me with pity. You are waiting for I do not know what, and it is only misfortune which can respond to your appeal. Come with me.”
She kept silence with a stubborn obstinacy. The quarrel between them was past mending; it was impossible [[192]]to utter a word which would not inflict a wound, or be an outrage. The odious passion of Bregeac separated them more than all that had happened and than the profound reasons which had always set them in opposition.
“Will you?” he said at last.
She said firmly: “I will not. I cannot stand your presence any longer. I can no longer live in the same house with you. I shall go away at the first opportunity.”
“And not alone—any more than the first time,” he sneered. “It’s William, I suppose.”
“I’ve got rid of William.”
“Some one else then, some one for whom you are waiting, I’m convinced of it. Your eyes are always looking for him—your ears are always listening for him. Yes: at this very moment!”
The front door had been opened and shut.
“What did I tell you?” cried Bregeac with an evil laugh. “One would really think that you were hoping that some one was going to come. No, Aurelie; no one will come, neither William, nor any one else. It is Valentine whom I sent to the Ministry to fetch my courrier, for I shall not go there again.”