"You must be tired," she said; "while you are settling down I will go and tell them to get tea ready in the drawing-room. If you knew how sweet it is to me to wait on you——."
"Go," he said, unable to find a phrase in reply, so completely was his soul possessed with happy emotion. "How I love her!" he added in a whisper, and to himself, as he watched her disappearing through the door with that figure and walk of a young girl which were still left her by her childless marriage; and he was obliged to sit down that he might not swoon before the evidence of his felicity. The human creature is naturally so organised for misfortune that there is something ravishing in the complete realisation of desire, like a sudden entry upon a miracle or a dream, and, at a certain degree of intensity, it seems as if the joy were not true. And then, was not the novelty of the situation bound to act like a sort of opium upon the brain of this child, who could not comprehend that his mistress had seized upon the circumstance to evade by this very strangeness the difficulties preliminary to a more complete surrender of her person?
Yes, was this joy true? Hubert asked himself the question a quarter of an hour later, seated beside Madame de Sauve in the little drawing-room at the square table, on which were placed all the apparatus necessary to lend it enjoyment: the silver teapot, the ewer of hot water, the delicate cups. Had she not brought those two cups from Paris with her in order, doubtless, always to have them? She waited on him, as she had said, with her pretty hands, from which she had taken her wedding ring, in order to remove from the young man's thoughts all occasion for remembering that she was not free. During those afternoon hours, the silence of the little town was almost palpable around them, and the sense of a common solitude deepening in their hearts was so intense that they did not speak, as though they feared that their words might awake them from the intoxicating kind of sleep which was creeping over their souls. Hubert had his head resting upon his hand, and was looking at Theresa. He felt her at this moment so completely his own, so near to his most secret being, that he had even ceased to experience the need of her caresses.
She was the first to break the silence, of which she suddenly became afraid. She rose from her chair and came and sat down upon the ground at the young man's feet, with her head on his knees, and, as he still continued motionless, there was disquiet in her eyes; then submissively, and in that subdued tone of voice which no lover has ever resisted, she said:
"If you knew how I tremble lest I should displease you! I cried yesterday evening beside the fire in this room, where I was waiting for you, thinking that you would be sure to love me less after my coming here. Ah! you will be angry with me for loving you too much, and for venturing to do what I have done for you!"
The anguish preying upon this charming woman was so great that Hubert saw her features change somewhat as she uttered these words. The whole drama which had been enacted within her from the beginning of this attachment took form for the first time. At this moment especially, seeing him so young, so pure, so free from brutality, so completely in accordance with her dream, she felt a mad longing to lavish marks of her tenderness upon him, and she trembled more than ever lest she should offend him, or perhaps—for there are such strange recesses in feminine consciences—corrupt him. Giving herself up to the pleasure of thinking aloud upon these things for the first time, she went on:
"We women, when we love, can do nothing else but love. From the day when I met you coming back from the country I have belonged to you. I would have followed you wherever you had asked me to follow you. Nothing has had any further existence for me—nothing but yourself; no," she added with a fixed look, "neither good nor evil, nor duty, nor remembrance. But can you understand that—you who think, as all men do, that it is a crime to love when one is not free?"
"I have ceased to know," replied Hubert, bending towards her to raise her, "except that you are to me the noblest and dearest of women."
"No, let me remain at your feet, like your little slave," she rejoined, with an expression of ecstacy; "but is it truly true? Ah! swear to me that you will never speak ill to yourself of this hour."
"I swear it," said the young man, who was overcome by his mistress's emotion without well knowing why.