A Love Crime

by Paul Bourget

What had he done to her? A deep melancholy took possession of him from the time of this visit to Louvet, of which he was very careful not to speak. What was the use of adding another pain to those which Helen already felt? For she suffered, as he could see—but why? Ingenuously he made it his study to find out the wrongs that he had done her. What frightened him most was that he could almost palpably feel the whole mystery in his wife's character. This is one of the most cruel trials that can come to a loving husband. When she was beside him, and alone with him, drawing out the stitches in her tapestry, he used to look at her and ask himself of what she was thinking.

Of what? All his superiority of education availed him nothing in the presence of this silent creature whose mere presence troubled him in so obscure a fashion. The desire of her person, a desire the satisfaction of which he was incapable of demanding as a right, paralysed him with a sort of nervous suffering which, united to natural timidity and to the anxiety respecting this increasing paleness, was growing into a veritable torture. And then, when Armand arrived in the middle of such a silence, a comparison was inevitably instituted on Alfred's part between his friend's easy manners and his own constraint, and especially between the difficulty which he found in talking to Helen and the abundance of words that came to the Baron de Querne. Helen, too, appeared to make the same comparison, for in Armand's presence she took an interest at once in what was being said.

These visits gave Chazel an uncomfortable feeling; he experienced a vague impression that he was in the way in his own house. He had several times remarked when it was he himself who interrupted a tête-à-tête between Armand and his wife, that the conversation suddenly ceased on his arrival; he recognised this by the brightness in Helen's eyes. On such occasions, that he might not give way to the vexation which he felt, he used to engage in those already mentioned abstract disquisitions. He saw that his old comrade had become more of a friend to his wife than to himself, he was hurt by it, he reproached himself for feeling hurt, and by the mere fact that he reproached himself, reflected about it.

He thus grew accustomed continually to unite the thoughts of his friend with that of his wife. But when we depict to ourselves simultaneously the images of two living persons, it is not long before we depict them acting upon each other, and in spite of himself Alfred came to consider the relations which united Armand to Helen. To ascertain the cause of his wife's suffering he had proceeded by elimination, instinctively studying as a problem the data that he possessed concerning her, and every time that he dwelt upon the mystery, he always struck upon a thought which he used to drive away, and which came back again. At other times he asked himself whether she had not confided the reason of her grief to De Querne, was on the point of questioning his friend, and then abstained from doing so.

"It would not be delicate," he thought to himself; "if she says nothing to me, she has her reasons for it."

One day, however, he saw her so pale, so downcast, that he took courage.

"You are suffering, Helen," he said; "will you find a better friend than I am to whom to confide your troubles, whatever they may be?"

"Nay, I have no troubles," she had replied, and she spoke falsely once more.

Why were her eyes then filled with that moisture which speaks of suppressed tears? Ah! it was because the loving kindness of her husband was a torture to her in her torture, were it only by its contrast to the frigidity of another man, the memory of whom was then passing through her heart. Why did the same memory pass at the same moment through Alfred's imagination? She, however, kept this memory before her mind, while he repelled it.

"Helen," he said to himself, "is an honourable woman. Armand is an honourable man. What right should I have to insult them with suspicion? He takes an interest in her; did I not desire that it should be so? She is attached to him—and why not? Can there not be honourable friendship between a man and a woman?"