'What am I worrying about after all?' he thought, on waking next morning, and finding that he was still a prey to his painful feelings. 'That she was in a good temper last night? I must be very selfish to reproach her with that! That Baron Desforges was in her box when she had told me that she was going to the theatre with her husband alone? She will explain that next time I see her. That her husband's face was not in keeping with his character? Appearances are so deceptive! How thoroughly have I been deceived in Claude Larcher, with his wheedling ways and his frank face! How often has he done me a favour and then pretended he had forgotten it, and yet how basely he has betrayed me after all!'
All the cruel impressions he had experienced on the preceding evening were now concentrated in a fresh and more furious fit of resentment against the man who, by his wicked gossip, had been the primary cause of his trouble. In the excess of his unjust anger René ignored the unquestionable merits of his friend and protector—absolute disinterestedness, a devotion that hoped for no return, and a total lack of literary envy. He was not even charitable enough to admit that Claude might have spoken to Colette unthinkingly and incautiously, but without any treacherous intentions. Suzanne's lover felt that he could not remain the friend of a man who had gone so far as to say what Larcher had said of his mistress. That is what René kept repeating to himself the whole day. On his return from the Bibliothèque, where he had found it almost impossible to work, he sat down to his table to write this villain one of those letters that are not easily forgotten. Having finished it, he read it over. The terms in which he defended Madame Moraines proclaimed his love, and now more than ever did he wish to keep that a secret from Claude.
'What is the use of writing to him at all?' he thought; 'when he comes back I will tell him what I think of him—that is much better.'
He was just about to destroy this dangerous letter when Emilie came in, as she often did before dinner, to ask him how he was getting on with his work. With a woman's innate curiosity, she read the address on the envelope, and said, 'Oh! is Claude in Venice? Then you've heard from him!'
'Never utter that name before me again!'replied René, tearing up the letter in a kind of cool rage.
Emilie said no more. She had not been mistaken in her brother's accents. René was in pain, and his anger against Claude was very great; but since he was silent concerning its cause, his sister knew that the latter must be something more than a mere literary dispute. By that intuition which always accompanies tender affection, Emilie guessed that the two writers had quarrelled on account of Madame Moraines, whose name René never mentioned now, and whom she was beginning to hate for the same reasons that had at first prompted her to like her. For some weeks past she had noticed a great mental and physical change coming over her brother. Although a model of purity herself, she was shrewd enough to attribute this degeneration to its true cause. She noticed it as she copied the fragments of the 'Savonarola' in the same way as she had copied the 'Sigisbée'; and although her admiration for the lightest trifle that came from René's pen was intense, there were many signs by which she could see how differently the two works had been inspired—from the number of lines written at each sitting to the continual reconstruction of the scenes and even to the handwriting, which had lost a little of its bold character.
The bubbling spring of clear, fresh poetry in which the 'Sigisbée' had had its source seemed to have dried up. What change had taken place in René's life? A woman had entered it, and it was therefore to this woman's influence that Emilie attributed the momentary impairment of the poet's faculties. She went still further, and hated this unknown but formidable creature for the pain inflicted on Rosalie. By a strange lapse of memory, frequently met with in generous natures, she forgot what part she had herself taken in her brother's rupture with his former fiancée. It was Madame Moraines whom she blamed for it all, and now this same woman was embroiling René with the best and most devoted of his friends—the one whom his faithful sister preferred because she had gauged the strength of his friendship.
'But how could it have happened,' she thought, 'since Claude is not here?'
She cudgelled her brains for a solution to this problem whilst attending to her household duties, hearing Constant's home lessons, making out Fresneau's bills, and conscientiously examining every button-hole and seam of her brother's linen. René was shut up in his room, where everything reminded him of Suzanne's one heavenly visit, and with feverish impatience he awaited the day appointed for their next meeting. Slander was doing its secret work, like some venomous sting. A poisoned man will go about without knowing that he is ill, except for a vague feeling of restlessness, but all the while the virus is fermenting in his blood and will produce sudden and terrible results.
The poet still treated the shameful accusations brought by Colette against Suzanne with scorn, but, by dint of pondering on her words in order to refute them, his mind became more accustomed to their tenour. At the moment when the actress had made her terrible charge he had not stooped to rebut it; but now, as he turned it over in his mind, he tried to save himself from a terrible abyss of doubt and from the most degrading jealousy by clutching at the marks of sincerity Suzanne had given him. What, then, were his feelings when, at the very outset of their next meeting, he received undeniable proofs that her sincerity was not what he had thought it?