"Yours is beginning and mine is ending. Yes, child, at twenty-six a woman is almost at the end of her youth, and you have so many years before you! But never, never will you be loved as I love you, and never will you forget me, never, never." And at other times: "You will marry," she would say; "she lives, she breathes, and yet she is not known to me, she who is to take you from me, and who will sleep every night upon your heart as I did at Folkestone. Ah! must it indeed be that I have met you so late, and that I cannot bind you to my kisses."
And she would encircle his neck with the loosened tresses of her long, black hair. Since she had belonged to him she had again acquired the habit which she had had as a young girl, of dressing her own hair, so that he might handle her beautiful locks. Then when she had dressed them again quite alone, and was attired and veiled, she would come back to him, not wishing to bid him good-bye anywhere but in the room where they had loved each other, and she would understand from the throbbings of Hubert's heart that no sensation told so much upon him as this good-bye kiss which she gave him with nearly cold lips. She would depart a prey to a nameless sadness, but one at least of which she told her lover. For she did not tell him of every sadness.
She was married, and although she had at all times had a room of her own, she was sometimes obliged to receive her husband in it. Alas! it was all the more necessary because she had a lover. It was a sinister expiation of her passion, and one which she justified on her part by telling herself that she owed as much to Hubert. If she ever became a mother could she fly with him and take from him his whole life? and the pitiless necessity of baleful lies and degrading partitions would thus come to torture her at the height of her happiness. She acquitted herself, nevertheless, since it was for him, her darling, that she lied.
Yes, but what monstrous enigma suddenly reared itself before her? Oh, the cruel, cruel enigma! With this divine love in her heart, how had she been able to do what she had done? For it had been, indeed, herself, and none other—she, with those feet of hers which now were feeling icy cold, with those hands which now were pressing her feverishly-throbbing brow—she, in short, with her whole physical being, who had left for Trouville at the end of the month of July—she, Theresa de Sauve, who had installed herself for the season in a villa on the hill. Yes, it had been herself. And yet no! It was not possible that Hubert's mistress had done this. What—this? Oh, cruel, cruel enigma!
From what depths of the memory of her senses had there issued those strange impulses, those secret, lustful temptations which had commenced to assail her? But have the senses really a memory? Can it be that the guilty fevers will not depart for ever from the blood which they have fired in evil hours?
Once settled in her villa, she had met again with old friends who had been greatly neglected since the beginning of her connection with Hubert. With these women and their admirers—their "fancy men," as a lady said who mixed in their "set"—she had formed several very cheerful and innocent country parties, and here she was, day by day, beginning, not to love Hubert less, but to live somewhat apart from her love, and to take pleasure anew in habits of masculine familiarities which she had forbidden to herself for a year past. She was so idle in her villa with no indoor occupation—not even reading. For she had never liked books much, and her connection with Alfred Fanières had disgusted her for ever with the falsity of fine phrases. When she had written lengthily to Hubert, and then briefly to her husband—who, moreover, came to see her every week—it was necessary to beguile the tedious hours; and at times fitful thoughts came to her which she dared not acknowledge to herself. Hankerings after sensations arose within her, and astonished her.
She knew by hearsay that almost all men, however tender they may be, and however dearly loved their mistresses, cannot remain long away from the latter without experiencing irresistible temptations to deceive her with the first girl that they meet. But this was true of men, and not of women. Why, then, did she find herself a prey to this inexplicable agitation, to this thirst for sensual intoxications, of which she had believed herself for ever cured by the influence of her ennobling, her ideal love? The depraved creature that she had formerly been awoke by degrees. At night, in her sleep, she was haunted by visions of her past. In vain, had she striven, and in vain had she cursed her secret perversion.
Then she had allowed herself to listen to the addresses of the young Count de la Croix-Firmim. She remembered with horror the kind of nervous fascination which this man's presence, his smile, and his eyes had exerted upon her. Then—she would fain have died at the recollection of this—one afternoon, when he had come up to see her, and there was a torrid heat, such as makes the will feel itself drooping, he had been venturesome, and she had given herself to him, faintly at first, and then impetuously and madly. For three days she had been his mistress—a prey to the wildness of physical passion—banishing, ever banishing, the recollection of Hubert, feeling herself rolling into a gulf of infamy, and flinging herself still further into it, until the day when she had awakened from this sensual frenzy as from a dream. She had opened her eyes, measured her shame, and, like a wounded and dying creature, had fled from the accursed spot and from her detested accomplice to return—to what?—and to whom?
A melancholy and heart-breaking return to what had been the restoration of her entire life, to what she had blasted for ever! She had returned to the room of those sweet hours, and she had found Hubert, her Hubert—but could she still call him so?—more tender, more loving, and more loved than before. Alas! alas! had her inexpiable deceit rendered her for ever powerless to taste that of which she was no longer worthy? In the young man's arms, and on his heart, she had remembered the other, and the ecstacy of former times, the delicious and unspeakable swooning in the excess of feeling, had fled from her.
It was then that Hubert had seen her sobbing despairingly, and an immense sadness had come upon her, a death-like torpor, crossed by a cruel anxiety lest some indiscreet speech should reach her lover and awake his suspicions. Her own reputation she heeded but little; she was well aware that after acting as she did with La Croix-Firmin, she could count on little but contempt and hatred from him. She also knew what the honour of those men who make it their profession to have women is worth. What tortured her, however, was not a fear lest he might compromise her personal security by speaking. After all, what had she, childless, and rich with an independent fortune, to dread from her husband?