'My God! how empty my phrases seem! I tremble at the thought that you will read these lines, and that is why I can scarcely write them. What will your answer be? Will you call me back to that shrine in the Rue Murillo where you have already been so kind and so full of indulgence that the memory of the minutes spent there falls like balm upon my aching heart? That poor heart beats only for you in obedient and humble admiration. Say—oh! say that you forgive me. Say that you will let me see you once more. Say that you will let us try to be friends. You would say all this, I know, if you could read what is in my heart. And even if you do not speak those blessed words, there shall be no murmuring, no reproaches, nothing but eternal gratitude—gratitude as deep in martyrdom as it would have been in ecstasy. I have learnt to-day how sweet it is to suffer through those one loves!'
It was six o'clock when René posted this letter. He gazed after it as it disappeared in the box, and no sooner had it left his hand than he began to regret having sent it, the anguish of suspense respecting the result being greater than his sufferings of the afternoon. In his disturbed state of mind he had entirely forgotten his daily habits and the fact that he had never stayed from home a whole day without giving some previous explanation. He sat down to dinner in the first restaurant he came across, without a thought of his people at home, and completely absorbed in speculations as to what Suzanne would do after reading his effusion. The first thing that awoke him from his state of semi-somnambulism was the exclamation of Françoise when, having reached home on foot about half-past nine, he opened the door and found himself face to face with the big, clumsy maid, who nearly dropped the lamp with fright.
'Oh! sir,' she cried; 'if you only knew how uneasy you've made Madame Fresneau—it's sent her into fits.'
As Emilie ran out into the passage to meet him René said, 'You don't mean to say that you've been upset by my not coming home? I couldn't help it,' he added in an undertone as he kissed her; 'it was on her account.'
Emilie, who had really spent a most wretched evening, looked at her brother. She saw that he too had been greatly agitated, and that his eyes were burning feverishly; she had not the courage to reproach him with selfishness in paying no regard to her own unreasonable susceptibilities—though he knew them so well—and replied in a whisper, as she pointed to the half-open door of the dining-room: 'The Offarels are here.'
These simple words sufficed to give a sudden turn to René's feelings. His fever of suspense was dispelled by a more pressing fear. During the sweetest moments of his walk through the Louvre that morning the memory of Rosalie had been able to give him pain—even when he was with Suzanne! And now he was obliged to unexpectedly face—not a vision—but the girl herself, to meet those eyes which he had avoided in such cowardly fashion for days past, to gaze upon that pallor which he himself had caused. A sense of his treachery once more came over him, but this time it was more painful and acute than ever. He had spoken words of love to another woman before breaking off his engagement with her whom he justly regarded as his betrothed.
He entered the dining-room as if he were walking to the scaffold, and had no sooner come under the full light of the lamp than he saw by the look in Rosalie's eyes that she read his heart like an open book. She was seated between Fresneau and Madame Offarel, working as usual, her feet resting on the supports of an empty chair upon which she had placed her ball of wool and her father's hat; this, as René knew well enough, was only an innocent ruse to get him to sit near her when he came home. She and her mother were knitting some long mittens for old Offarel, who had now got hold of an idea that he was going to have gout in his wrists. Her fanciful parent was there, too, drinking, in spite of his imaginary ills, a glass of good strong grog and playing piquet with the professor. It was Emilie who had proposed the game in order to discourage general conversation, and so be able to give herself up to thoughts of her absent brother, whilst Angélique Offarel had been helping her to unravel some skeins of silk. A soft light illumined this quiet, peaceful scene, symbolical, in the poet's eyes, of all that had so long constituted his happiness, and which he had now given up for ever. Fortunately for him the professor immediately made his loud voice heard, and so put an end to his further reflections.
'Young man,' cried Fresneau, 'you can boast of having a sister who thinks something of you, I can tell you! She was actually proposing to sit up all night! "Something must have happened to him. He would have sent a wire." For two pins she would have sent me off to the Morgue. It was no use my suggesting that some one had kept you to dinner. Come, Offarel, it's your deal.'
'I had to go into the country,' replied René, 'and I lost the train.'
'How badly he tells them!' thought Emilie, admiring her brother as much for his unskilfulness, which in this case was a sign of honesty, as she would have admired him for Machiavelian cleverness.