Not quite resigned, Barbe went off to keep watch. Emma remained for a few instants listening.
Beautiful! Oh, she was beautiful! Like the very demon of unlawful love, and yet she was but an outline against the shining rectangle of the door—a motionless shadow, but a shadow as supple as a movement. For Emma in repose, always seemed as if she had paused in the middle of a dance, and was even continuing it through some strange spell, so completely did the sight of her make a harmony—that harmony of the wanton bayaderes, whose only miming is love-making, and who cannot move in their undulating, quivering motions, without shaking their locks, nor make the least little gesture without a suggestion of voluptuousness.
Life was boiling in my veins! My senses whirled. It was like a tide of passion rising from out the depths of the ages.
Emma! In the madman’s room! Heavens! With that brute! The wretched girl! I could have killed her.
You will say that I did not know anything, that my suspicions were groundless.
Ah, then, you do not know that impulsive gait, that sly and hungry look of women who are going stealthily to a sweetheart.
It maddened me. The pretty girl, as she hastened to this ignoble scene, brushed the curtain with the swish of her skirt. I stood before her barring the path.
She gave a gasp of terror. I thought she was going to faint. Barbe showed her great round eyes, and fled in panic. Then, like a fool, I gave the reason for my exploit.
“Why are you going to that madman’s room?” My words sounded artificial, broken.
“Tell me—Why? In God’s name, tell me?”