He recoiled before her imprecations and her threats; and she went on, in a fresh access of hate: “But your hour has not yet come. You have not suffered enough. You did not suffer because you believed me dead. Your punishment now shall be to know that I am alive and that I love! Yes; understand that: I love Ralph. I loved him first in order to avenge myself on you and tell you of it later. And I love him to-day for no reason at all, just because he is himself and I can no longer forget him. He hardly knew it; I hardly knew it myself. But for some days, ever since he fled from me, I have felt that he is my whole life. I did not know what love was; and that is what love is: it’s this madness which burns me.”
She was a prey to delirium just as the man she was torturing. Her amorous cries seemed to hurt her as much as they hurt Beaumagnan. But to see her like that filled Ralph rather with distaste than with joy. The flame of passion and admiration and love, which had flared up in him in the hour of her peril, died down for good and all. Her beauty and charm vanished like a mirage; and on her face, which nevertheless had in no way changed, he saw the ugly reflection of a cruel and diseased spirit.
She continued her furious onslaught on Beaumagnan, who stood jerking with jealous fury. And it was really uncommonly disconcerting to see these two creatures, who, at the very moment at which circumstances were about to furnish them with the key-word of the enigma which had puzzled them so long, forget everything in the outburst of their passion. The great secret of past ages, the discovery of the jewels, the legendary block of granite, the casket, the inscription, the Widow Rousselin, and the person actually on the way to reveal the truth to them—these were so many old wives’ tales in which neither of them now took any interest. Love, like a furious torrent, swept everything away. Hatred and passion had plunged into the eternal conflict which tears the hearts of lovers.
Once more the fingers of Beaumagnan were curved like talons and his trembling hands were outstretched to strangle her. But she raged at him, blind and beside herself, and flung in his face the insult of her love.
“I love him, Beaumagnan!” she cried. “The fire which burns you and devours me, too, is a love like your love; with it is mingled the idea of death and murder. Yes, I would rather kill him than know that he was another’s, or than know that he loves me no longer. But he does love me, Beaumagnan! He loves me! He loves me!”
An unexpected laugh burst from Beaumagnan’s convulsed lips; his fury ended in a fit of sardonic hilarity.
“He loves you, Josephine? You’re right: he loves you! He loves you as he loves all women. You’re beautiful and he desires you. Another passes and he desires her, too. And you suffer as I do the tortures of hell. Confess it!”
“The tortures of hell, yes,” she said, “the tortures of hell if I believe in his falseness. But it isn’t so; and you’re trying stupidly to——”
She stopped short. Beaumagnan was chuckling with such a malicious joy that she was afraid.
In a low voice and in a tone of sudden pain she said: “A proof! Give me a single proof.... Not even a proof.... A mere indication.... Something that compels me to doubt.... And I’ll kill him like a dog!”