'Just for once!' she said to herself as her brougham rolled along; 'I shall get there quicker.' The ideas of worldly prudence had soon made way for others. 'I wonder whether René is at home? Of course he is. He is waiting for a letter from me, or for some sign of my existence.' It was almost the same question she had asked herself and the same answer she had given on the occasion of her first visit in March, two months and a half before. By the difference in her feelings she could measure the progress she had made since that time. Then, she had hastened to the poet's dwelling in obedience to a violent caprice—but still only a caprice. Now, it was love that coursed through her veins, the love that thirsts for love in return, that sees nought else in the world but the object it desires, and that would unflinchingly make for its goal under the cannon's mouth. She loved now with all her body and soul; she had proofs of it in her unreasonable impatience to get along still faster and in her fears that the step she had taken might be in vain. Her agitation was intense when the carriage stopped at the gate that barred the entrance to the street. The latter, thanks to the trees whose foliage overtopped the garden wall on the right, looked fresh and green in the soft sunlight of this bright May afternoon.
She had undoubtedly been less moved on the former occasion when asking the concierge whether M. Vincy was at home. The man told her that he was in. She rang the bell, and, as before, the sound of it caused a thrill to run through her from head to foot. She heard a door open and light footsteps approaching. Remembering the heavy tread she had once heard in the same place, she concluded that the person now coming to the door was neither the maid nor René; the footfall of the latter she knew too well. She had a presentiment that she was about to face her lover's sister—the woman whose absence had favoured her former visit. She had no time to think of the drawbacks of this unexpected incident, for Madame Fresneau had already opened the door. Her face left Suzanne no doubt as to her identity, so great was the resemblance between the brother and sister. Neither had Emilie any hesitation in deciding who the visitor was. The sight of René's fresh sufferings during the past few days, added to the information she had gleaned from Claude, had intensified her hatred towards Madame Moraines, and as she replied to Suzanne's question she could not help giving her words a tone of bitter and unconcealed hostility.
'No, madame, my brother is not in.' Then, her sisterly affection suggesting a way to avoid all further questions as to the time of René's return, she added: 'He left town this morning.'
The reply given her by the concierge told Suzanne that this was a lie, but she had no reason for believing the lie to be an invention of Emilie's. She was obliged to believe, and did believe, that Madame Fresneau was obeying the orders given her by her brother. She tried to learn nothing further, a graceful inclination of her head in the very best form being the only revenge she took for the almost rude manners of the bourgeoise. Her outward calm, however, hid a great deal of disappointment and real pain. She did not stop to ask herself whether Emilie's strange behaviour was due to René's indiscreet confidences or not. She merely said to herself, 'He does not wish to see me again,' and that idea hurt her deeply. On reaching the street she turned to cast a glance at the window of the room into which she had once made her way, and remembered how, on that occasion, she had also looked round on leaving, and had seen the poet standing behind the half-drawn blinds. Would he not take up the same position to see her go when his sister told him who had called? She stood waiting for five minutes, and the fact of the blinds remaining down was a source of fresh grief to her. As she got into her brougham she was as agitated as only a woman can be who loves sincerely and who is obliged to be incessantly changing her plans. After turning the matter over again and again, she, who never wrote, decided to send the following letter:
Saturday, 5 o'clock.
'Dear René,—I called at your house, and your sister told me you had left town. But I know that is not true. You were there, only a few yards away from me, in that room where every object must have reminded you of my former visit, and yet you would not see me. You can surely have no doubts of my sincerity on that occasion? Why should I have acted a lie? I entreat you to let me see you, if it be only for a minute. Come and read in my eyes what you swore never to doubt—that you are my all, my life, my heaven. Since last night I am as one dead. Your horrible words are continually in my ears. It cannot be you who spoke them. Where could you have got that bitterness, almost akin to hatred? How can you condemn me unheard on a suspicion for which you will blush when I have proved to you how false it is? I ought, it is true, to be indignant and angry with you, but my heart, dear René, contains only love for you, and a desire to efface from your soul all that the enemies of our happiness have engraved there. The step I took this morning, though contrary to all that a woman owes herself, I took so cheerfully that, had you seen me, you could have had no doubt respecting the sentiments that animate me. Send me no answer. I feel even as I write how powerless a letter is to describe the feelings of the heart. I shall expect you on Monday at eleven in our sanctuary. It should be my right to tell you I demand to see you there, for those accused have always the right to defend themselves. I will only say, Come, if you ever loved, even for a day, the woman who has never told you and never will tell you aught but the truth. I swear it, my only love.'
When Suzanne had finished her letter she read it over. A lingering instinct of prudence made her hesitate before signing it, but the sincerity of her passion caused her to blush for her momentary weakness, and, taking up her pen, she wrote her name at the bottom of this faithful description of the strange moral condition into which she had drifted. She lied once more in swearing that she spoke the truth, and yet nothing was truer, more spontaneous, and less artificial than the feelings which dictated the supreme deception that capped all the rest. She summoned her footman, and, again scorning all ideas of prudence, told him to give the letter—any single sentence in which would have ruined her—to a commissionaire for immediate delivery. During the thirty-six hours that separated her from the rendez-vous she had fixed she lived in a state of nervous excitement of which she would never have deemed herself capable.
This woman, who had such perfect control over herself, and who had entered upon this adventure with the same Machiavelian sangfroid she had maintained in all her Society relations for years, now felt powerless to follow, or even to form, any kind of plan respecting the attitude to be assumed towards her lover. She was to dine out that night, but she went through the process of dressing in an absolutely listless way—an unusual thing for her—and without even looking in the glass. During the whole of the dinner she found not a word to say to her neighbour, the ubiquitous Crucé, and her brougham had been ordered for ten o'clock on the plea that she was still suffering from her indisposition of the preceding evening. On her way home she paid not the slightest attention to her husband's words; his very presence was intolerable to her, for it was on his account, remaining at home as he did on Sundays, that she had been obliged to put off her meeting with René until Monday. Would the poet consent to come? How anxiously, as the servant helped her off with her cloak, did she scan the tray on which were placed the letters that had come by the evening post! The poet's writing was not to be seen on any envelope. She spent the whole of Sunday in bed, under pretext of a bad headache, but in reality trying to think out some plan in case René refused to believe her story of a sick friend as an explanation of her visit to the Rue du Mont-Thabor.
But he would believe it. She could not admit to herself that he would not; the supposition was too painful. Her fever of longing and suspense, of hope and fear, reached its climax on Monday morning as she ascended the stairs of the house in the Rue des Dames. If René were waiting for her, hidden, as usual, behind the half-open door, it would prove that her letter had conquered him, and in that case she was saved. But no—the door was closed. Her hand trembled as she inserted the key in the lock. She entered the first room and found it empty and the blinds drawn. She sat down in the semi-darkness and gazed upon the objects that recalled a happiness so recent and yet already so far away. There was just the ordinary furniture of a modest drawing-room—a few arm-chairs and a sofa in blue velvet, with antimacassars carefully hung at the proper height. The handful of books René had brought were ranged in perfect order on a well-dusted shelf, and the worthy landlady had even taken care that the gilt clock, with its figure of Penelope, had been kept going.
Suzanne listened to the swing of the pendulum as it broke the silence in the apartment. Seconds passed, then minutes, then quarters, and still René did not come. He would not come now. As this fact dawned upon her Madame Moraines, accustomed from her earliest youth to having all her wishes gratified, was seized with a fit of real despair. She began to weep like a child, and her tears fell faster and faster, unaccompanied now by any thoughts of simulation. She felt a desire to write, but no sooner had she found some paper in the blotting-book left by her lover and dipped the pen in the ink than she pushed the things away, exclaiming, 'What is the good of it?' To show that she had been there in case René should come after she was gone she left behind her the scented handkerchief with which she had dried her bitter tears. She murmured to herself, 'He used to like this scent!' and by the side of the handkerchief she laid the gloves that he had always buttoned for her as she was going. Then, with a heavy heart, she left the room in which she had been so happy. Could it be possible that those happy hours had gone—and for ever?