Here fear was intense, but short-lived. Ely descended from a line of warriors. She was capable of carrying out actively an energetic policy. She could think out clearly a situation. Resourceful and proud natures like hers have no time for the feverish creations of an unsound imagination enfeebled by terror. She was one of those who dare to look upon approaching danger. Thus in the first flush of her dawning passion for Hautefeuille, as her confession to Madame Brion proved, she had foreseen with a clearness that was almost a certainty the struggle that would take place between her love and Olivier's friendship for Pierre.
But this power of courageous realization allows such natures to measure the danger once they are face to face with it. They lay bare, with the greatest clearness, the facts of the crisis through which they pass. They have the strength that comes from daring to hope, from having an exact idea of the danger in moments that appear desperate. Thus though Ely de Carlsberg was a victim to a return of her awful anxiety, after Hautefeuille's departure, when she again laid down her head upon the pillow, though she suffered from a disquietude that kept her awake, when she arose the following morning she again felt confidence in the future. She had hope!
She had hope, and for motives that she saw clearly, just as the General, her father, used to see a battlefield laid out in imagination definitely and accurately. She had hope, in the first place, in Du Prat's love for his wife. She had felt how refreshing to the heart is the love of a young, pure nature innocent of the world. She had experienced it herself. She knew how the moral nature is restored, reformed, re-created, is purified by contact with the belief in the good, the magnanimity of generous impulses, the nobility of a broad charity. She knew how such an association washes away all shameful bitterness, all evil sentiment, all traces of vice. Olivier had married the girl of his choice. She loved him and he loved her. Why should he not have felt all the beneficent influence of youth and purity? And in that case where would he find the strength to wreck the happiness of a woman whom he had loved, whom he judged severely, but in whose sincerity he could not fail to believe?
Ely had this basis for her hope. She trusted in the truth of her passion for Pierre, in the evidence that would confront Olivier of his friend's happiness. She said to herself: "Once his first moment of suspicion is passed, he will begin to observe, to notice. He will see that with Pierre I have been free from any of the faults that he used to magnify into crimes, that I have been neither proud nor frivolous nor coquettish."—She had been so single-minded, so upright, so true in her love! Like all people possessed by a complete happiness, she thought it impossible for any one to misunderstand the truth of her heart.
Then, again, she trusted in the honor of both—in Pierre's, to begin with. Not only was she sure he would not speak of her, she knew in addition that he would use all his strength to prevent his secret being suspected by even his most intimate friend. Then she trusted in Olivier. She knew him to be of a scrupulous delicacy in all things, to be careful in his speech, to be a perfect gentleman! He would certainly never speak. To utter the name of one who had once been his mistress when their relations had been conducted under certain unrevealed conditions would be an infraction of a tacit agreement, as sacred as his word of honor, would be to be disgraced in his own eyes. Olivier had too much self-respect to be guilty of such a fault, unless it were in a moment of maddening suffering. This condition was lacking in his case. He could never have this excuse under the circumstances in which he returned, married and happy, after an absence of months and months, almost two years! No, there could not arrive this crisis in his life now. And, above all, he would never cause his friend to suffer.—Besides—and this was the final motive upon which Ely's hopes were based, was the most solid of all, and only that proved how thoroughly she knew Olivier—if he spoke of her to Pierre it would place a woman between them, it would trouble the ideal serenity of their affection, which had never been dimmed by a cloud. Even should he lose his self-respect, Olivier would never lose his respect for his friendship.
It was in such thoughts that the unhappy woman sought relief upon the day following Olivier's arrival in Cannes. It was the very day that the young man's suspicions took bodily form, the day when all indications pointed to one thing only, accumulated around him and were condensed into absolute certainty by the well-meant but irreparable words spoken by Corancez!
Ely de Carlsberg hoped, and her reason confirmed her hopes. But that very same reason was to destroy, bit by bit, the ground for hoping in the week following Olivier's return. And this, also, without her once meeting him. She dreaded nothing so much as meeting him face to face, and yet she would have preferred an explanation, even a stormy one, to this total lack of intercourse. That they did not meet was evidently an intentional act upon the part of the young man, for it was an impoliteness that could not be accidental.
There was only one way left for Ely to learn the truth, the talks that she had with Hautefeuille. How her suffering was intensified, how her agony was increased! Only from Hautefeuille could she hear of Olivier during the week. Through Hautefeuille she followed the tragedy being enacted in the heart of her former lover. To Pierre it was quite natural to tell his dear confidante of all the anxiety that his friend caused him. He never dreamt that the least important detail was full of significance for her. In every conversation with Pierre during the first eight days she descended deeper and deeper into the dangerous abyss of Olivier's thoughts. She saw a possible catastrophe approaching from the first,—a possible catastrophe that became a probability, even a certainty, at last.
The first blow to Ely's hope was dealt upon the day following the dinner at Monte Carlo, when she again saw Pierre, not this time in the quiet intimacy of a nocturnal meeting, but at the big soirée which had been spoken about in the train. It was late when he arrived. The salons were quite full, for it was nearly eleven o'clock.
"Olivier insisted upon keeping me," he said, excusing the lateness to Madame de Carlsberg. "I began to think he would never let me go."