Conceived amid her mother's remorse, Theresa had a tragic soul. She was capable of depravity, but incapable of that amused forgetfulness which plucks the fleeting hour, and cannot, without effort, recall the first lover's name among all the rest. No; this first lover, this Frederick Suzel, whom George Liauran had justly suspected, could never be thought of by her without causing her thorough nausea by the recollection of the sad motives of her surrender to him. He was a man gay even to buffoonery, and witty even to cynicism, with that sort of wit which is current between the Opera House, Tortoni, and the Café Anglais.
When paying his addresses to Theresa, he had the good sense not to lose himself in the tricks of fashionable flirtations as did his numerous rivals—a troop of beasts of prey on the scent of a victim. With great skilfulness of language and a certain penetration of vice, he had frankly offered to arrange with her a kind of partnership for pleasure which should be secret, sure, and with no future, and the unfortunate woman had accepted his proposal. Why? Because she was dreadfully dull; because she was carrying off Suzel from one of her friends; because she was greedy for new sensations, and this person, with his dishonouring talk, had about him a sort of strange prestige of libertinism. Of this connection, in which Frederick had at least been faithful to his promise in not seeking to prolong it, Theresa had soon been deeply ashamed, and she had escaped from it as from the galleys.
After a year spent in enduring her remorse, and in feeling herself sullied by all the knowledge of evil that her intimacy with this man had revealed to her, she had thought to find satisfaction for the needs of her heart in the person of Alfred Fanières, one of the most subtle novelists of the day. Did not all the books of this charming narrator, from his first and only volume of poetry to his last collection of tales, reveal the most minute and tender understanding of the gentle feminine mind? In this second connection, begun with the most intoxicating hope—that, namely, of consoling all the deceptions of an admired artist—Theresa had soon struck upon the implacable barrenness of the inmost nature of the worn-out literary man, in whom there is an absolute divorce between feeling and written expression.
Though undeceived, she nevertheless persisted in remaining this man's mistress, from that reason which causes a woman's second love affair to be the longest of all in coming to a conclusion. She will admit that the first has been a mistake; but the mistake of her marriage and the mistake of her first amour make two; at the third error she acknowledges that the fault in her conduct is due to herself, and not to the circumstances of her life, and this is a cruel confession for secret pride. Then the writer's egotism had manifested itself so harshly, when he had believed himself sure of her, that the revolt had been too strong, and Theresa had broken with him.
It was during the period of hard distress subsequent to this rupture that she had met Hubert Liauran. From the corner of her solitary hearth, beside which she watched persistently, she could see so very clearly what the discovery of this tender child's heart had been to her. In an existence which had comprised nothing but wounding or disgrace—had not her keenest sorrows been dishonoured beforehand by their cause?—with what delighted emotion had she measured the purity of this young man's heart? What anxiety had she felt, and what a dread of not pleasing him! What a dread, too, knowing that she had pleased him, of being ruined in his thoughts!
How she had trembled lest one of the cruel talkers of society should reveal her past to Hubert! How had she employed all her woman's art to make this love an adorable poem, wherein should be lacking nothing that might enchant a soul innocent and new to life! How had she enjoyed his reverence, and how had she allowed it to be prolonged! Ah! when she thought now of those two days at Folkestone she could scarcely believe that they had been real, and that she had had the courage to survive them. She remembered that she had gone with Hubert to the terminus in spite of every consideration of prudence; she had seen him disappear in the direction of London, leaning out of the carriage window to watch her the longer; she had re-entered the rooms which they had both occupied, before herself taking train for Dover, and there she had spent two hours in the grievous loneliness of a soul overwhelmed with simultaneous despair and felicity.
Her soul bent beneath its weight of recollections like a flower overladen with dew. She had there known a complete union between her two natures—an almost passionate vibration of her entire being. She had half forgiven herself the past, excusing herself by saying mentally to Hubert the words which so many women have said aloud to men jealous of those bygone days which belonged to others: "I did not know you!"
On their subsequent return to Paris, how carefully and piously had she set herself, during the spring and summer, to live in such a way as not to lose his affection for a single minute! She had resumed all the modesty admitted by love that is complete, but is ennobled by the soul. She trembled constantly lest her caresses should be a cause of corruption to this being, so young both in heart and in body, whom she wished to intoxicate without defiling.
Although she was enamoured to distraction, she had desired the meetings in the little abode in the Avenue Friedland to be far between, lest she should not long enough preserve in his eyes her charm of divine novelty. They had not been very numerous—she might have counted them, tasting in thought the distinct sweetness of each—those afternoons when, with all the shutters closed, and with no light, she had again found the delights of the Folkestone time, sunk in her lover's arms, and dead to everything but the present moment and its intoxication.
She had gone so far in her idolatry of Hubert as to worship Madame Liauran, although she well knew that she was hated by her. She worshipped her for having brought up this son in such an atmosphere of pure and shrinking sensibility. She worshipped her for having kept him for her during the years of adolescence and youth, so delicate, so graceful, so tender, so much her own, so absolutely her own in the past, the present, and the future. For there was loftiness, almost folly, in her pride. She would say to him: