Nevertheless, her longing did not blind her to such a degree as to make her forget what she knew of her lover's character. Proud and pure as she knew him to be, how difficult it was to effect a reconciliation with him! And, moreover, what means could she employ to be alone with him even for an hour? Write? She did so, not once, but ten times. Having sealed the letter she threw it into a drawer, and did not send it at all. At first no expression seemed to her sufficiently coaxing and humble, endearing and tender. Then she was terrified with the apprehension lest Hubert should not even open the envelope, and should return it to her without a reply. Meet him again in society? She had a frightful dread of such an accident. With what courage could she endure his glance, which would be a cruel one, and one which she could not even attempt to disarm? Go to the Rue Vaneau and obtain an interview from him? She knew only too well that this was not possible. Send him a message? By whom? The only person to whom she had confided her love was her country friend whom she had employed to post her letters to her husband, while she herself was at Folkestone. Among all the men whom she met in society, that one who was sufficiently intimate with Hubert to act as a messenger in such an embassy was also he in whom her woman's instinct showed her the probable author of the indiscreet remarks which had ruined her—George Liauran. She was bound by the thousand tiny threads which society fastens to the limbs of its slaves.
At last, without any calculation, and by obeying the impulses of her own heart, she succeeded in finding a means which appeared almost infallible to her for coming to an explanation. She experienced an irresistible longing to visit the little abode in the Avenue Friedland, and she told herself that Hubert would, sooner or later, feel this longing like herself. Of inevitable necessity she must meet him face to face on one of these visits. Under the influence of this idea she began to pay long solitary visits to those ground floor rooms, whose every nook spoke to her of her lost happiness. The first time that she came there in this way, the hour which she spent among the furniture, was the occasion of such intolerable emotion that she was nearly relapsing into the extravagance of her first despair. She returned, nevertheless, and by degrees it became strangely sweet to her to accomplish this pilgrimage of love nearly every day. The doorkeeper lit the fire; she allowed the flame to illuminate the little drawing-room with a flickering light which struggled against the invasion of the twilight; she lay down upon the divan, to experience a sensation at once torturing and delicious, a blending of expectation, melancholy, and remembrance. Each time she was careful to first ask:
"Has the gentleman been here?" and the negative reply would give her the hope that chance might cause the young man's visit to coincide with her own.
She noticed, with beating heart, the slightest noise. All the objects around her which were not coloured by the blaze from the fireplace, were drowned in the shadow. The apartment was scented with the exhalations from the flowers, the cups and vases of which she used herself to trim, and she alternately dreaded and desired the entry of Hubert. Would he forgive her? Would he repel her? And finally she had to leave this refuge of her last hope, and she departed, her veil drawn down, her soul flooded by the same sadness that she used formerly to feel when Hubert's kisses were still fresh on her lips, at once comforted and terrified by this thought:
"When shall I see him again? Will it be to-morrow?"
One afternoon when stretched thus upon the divan and absorbed in her dreams, she seemed to hear the turning of a key in the lock of the outer door. She sat up suddenly with a wild throbbing of heart. Yes, the door was opening and closing. A step sounded in the ante-room. A hand was opening the second door. She fell back again upon the cushions of the divan, unable to endure the approach of what she had so greatly hoped for, and thus finding, through her very sincerity, the vanquished attitude which the most refined coquetry would have chosen and which was calculated to work most powerfully upon her lover,—if it were he. But what other could come, and did she not immediately recognise his step? Yes, it was indeed Hubert who was just coming in.
Since their rupture, he, too, had often wished to come back to the little ground floor rooms, where the clock had struck for him so many sweet hours,—the clock over which Theresa used gracefully to throw the black lace of her second veil "in order to veil the time better," she said. Then he had not ventured. Fond memories made him timid. People are afraid, in renewing such, both of feeling too much and of feeling too little. This afternoon, however, was it the influence of the gloomy winter sky and his own bewitching melancholy? Was it the reading yesterday of one of Theresa's most charming notes, dated a year back on the very same day?
Without thinking about it, Hubert had found himself on the way to the Avenue Friedland. To reach the latter he had mechanically pursued a network of winding streets, as he used of old in order to avoid spies. What need was there of such stratagems to-day? And the contrast had made his heart heavy. On his way he had to pass a telegraph office which formerly he used to enter after their meetings to prolong the voluptuousness of them by writing Theresa a note to surprise her just after she had reached home—a stifled echo, distant and so tender of the intoxicated sighs of that day! He saw the door of the office, its dark colour, its inscription, the opening of the box reserved for telegraph cards, and he nearly fainted.
But he was already pursuing the pathway of the fatal Avenue, and he could see the house, the closed venetian blinds of the front rooms on the ground floor, and the entrance commanded by the gateway. How did he feel when the doorkeeper, after asking whether "the gentleman had had a good journey," added, in his hatefully obsequious tones: "The lady is there——?"
He had not yet taken the key from his pocket when this news, less unexpected, perhaps, than he would acknowledge to himself, struck him like a full blow upon the breast. What was to be done? Dignity commanded him to depart immediately. But the lurking, deep desire which he had to see Theresa again suggested to him one of those sophisms, thanks to which we always find means to prefer with our reason what we most desire with our instinct.