But a look of distrust in Hubert's eyes was what she felt to be beyond her powers of endurance. Perhaps, nevertheless, it might be better that he should know the frightful truth? He would drive her from him like an unfortunate; but at times anything seemed preferable to the torment of having such remorse at her heart, and of lying ceaselessly to so noble a fellow. She had again set herself to love him with desperate frenzy, and, as her revolt against the baser part of her nature hurried her to an extreme in the other or romantic direction, a mad desire came upon her to tell him everything, that at least the voluntary humiliation of her confession might be, as it were, a ransom for her infamy. And yet, although silence was a very lie, this lie she had still the strength to sustain; but, as for an actual lie, she suffered too much to have the shameful energy for it, if ever he questioned her.
And this questioning she was now about to face; she could read it between the lines of the despatch. Ah! what was she now to do, if she had guessed aright? She had drunk as much of the gall of shame as she could bear. Would she have heart enough still to drink this, the bitterest drop, and once more betray her only love by a fresh deception? If she were frank Hubert must at least esteem her for her frankness, and if she were not how could she endure herself? Yes, but to speak was the death of her happiness.
Alas! had not this been dead ever since her return? Would she ever recover what she had once felt? What was the use of disputing with fate for this mutilated, sullied remnant of a divine dream? And all that night she was bowed beneath the agony of these thoughts, a poor creature born for all the nobility of a single and faithful love, who had caught a glimpse of her dream and had possessed it, to be then dispossessed of it by the fault of a nature hidden within her, but which, nevertheless, was not her entire self.
[CHAPTER IX]
In the cab which brought her to the Avenue Friedland on the day following this night of agony, Theresa de Sauve, took none of the precautions that were habitual with her, such as changing vehicles on the way, tying a double veil across her face, or peeping at the street corners through the little pane of glass behind, to see whether anything of a suspicious nature was accompanying her clandestine drive. All these timorous secrecies of forbidden love used formerly to please her delightfully on Hubert's account. Was not the continuance of their intrigue secured by securing its mysteriousness? There was little question of that now. In her ungloved hand she held a little gold key hanging to the chain of a bracelet—a pretty trinket of tenderness which her lover had had contrived for her. This key, which never left her wrist, served to open the door of the ground floor lent by Emmanuel Deroy, the worshipped refuge of the few days during which she had really lived her life—a dream-oasis to which the unhappy woman was now going as to a cemetery.
There was likely to be a storm in the course of the day, for the atmosphere of the autumn morning was heavy, and completely charged with a sort of electric torpor, the influence of which irritated still further her weak, womanish nerves. She did not tell the cabman, as she always used to do, to drive into the entry,—for the house had two exits, and the large open gateway allowed her to be brought in the cab to the very door of the apartments without being seen by the porter, whose discretion was, moreover, guaranteed by the profits resulting from the amour of his tenant's friend. She had fastened her eyes the whole way upon the slightest details in the streets successively passed through; she knew them well, from the signs of the shops to the look of the houses, because these images were associated with the happiest memories of her too short romance. She uttered to them in thought the same mournful farewell as to her happiness.
A prey, too, to the hallucinations of terror, she could no longer distinguish the possible from the real, and she no longer doubted that Hubert knew all. She read again the note which she had received the day before, and every word of which, to her who knew the young man's character so well, betrayed profound anguish. Whence had this anguish come if not from an event relating to their love? And from what event if not from a revelation of the horrible deception, the infamous act committed by her, yes, by herself? Ah! if there were somewhere a lustral water to cleanse the blood, and with it the recollection of all evil fevers! But, no; it continues to course in our veins, this blood, laden with the most shameful sins. There is no interruption between the beating of our pulse in the hour of our remorse and its beating in the hour of our fault. And Theresa could again feel pressing upon her face the kisses of the man with whom she had betrayed Hubert. Yet she had paid back these frightful kisses.
"Ah! if he questions me, how could I find strength to lie to him, and what would be the use?"
These words had terminated all her meditations since the day before, and she uttered them to herself again when she found herself in front of the door within which there was doubtless going to be enacted one of the, to her, most tragical scenes in the drama of her life. Her fingers trembled so that she had some trouble in slipping the little gold key into the lock—the key which had been given to be handled with other feelings! She knew, beyond doubt, that at the mere sounding of this key turning on the bolt Hubert would be there behind the door awaiting her.
He was there, in fact, and received her in his arms. He felt her lips to be perfectly cold. He looked at her, as he did on each occasion, after pressing her to him. It seemed as though he wished to persuade himself of the truth of her presence. This first kiss always gave Theresa a spasm at the heart, and it needed all her dread of displeasing her lover to make her release herself from his arms. Even at this moment, and in spite of all the tortures of the night before, she thrilled to the very depths of her being, and she was seized with something like a mad desire to intoxicate Hubert with so many endearments that they should both forget—he, what he had to ask, and she, what she had to reply. It was but a quiver, nevertheless, and it died away on simply hearing the young man's voice questioning her with anxiety.