"Farewell," she replied.
He took a few steps toward the door. Then he turned and approached her. This time she read in his eyes all the maddening vertigo of love and desire. She was seized with such a terror that she could not move. When he arrived at her chair, he took her head between his hands and frantically, passionately pressed it to his heart. He covered her brow, her hair, her eyes with kisses, and strove to kiss her lips with a mad frenzy that restored the woman all her strength. Thrusting him from her with all the vigor that her indignation gave her, she rose and took refuge in the corner of the salon, crying, as though appealing for help to the being who had the right to defend her:—
"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre!"
As he heard the name of his friend, Olivier seized a chair as though he were about to faint. And suddenly, without looking at Ely, who was crouching against the wall almost swooning, with her hand pressed upon her heart, without saying a single word either of adieu or to ask pardon, he left the salon.
She heard him traverse the bigger room and heard the second door close. He went away with the terrified air of a man who had almost succumbed to the temptation to crime and who flees from himself and his loathsome desire. He passed, without seeing them, the two footmen in the vestibule, who had to run after him with his cane and overcoat. He went along one of the alleys in the garden without knowing it. The rush of emotion that had flung him upon his former mistress, now the mistress of his dearest friend, now gave way to such a flood of remorse, he was so tossed about on the sea of conflicting emotions caused by the kisses pressed upon the face he had longed for so secretly, with such intensity, during the past few days, by the sensation of her lips seeking to avoid contact with his own, of the beloved figure thrusting him away with repulsion and horror, that he felt his reason was giving way.
All at once, as he turned round the corner of the railing surrounding the villa, he saw that some one was awaiting him in a carriage. The sight arrested him with the same ghastly terror he would have felt at seeing the spectre of some one he believed dead and resting in the bosom of the earth. It was the avenger whom Ely had called to her aid. It was Hautefeuille!
"Olivier!"
It was all he said. But his voice, his deadly pallor, his eyes, in which shone the suffering of a heartbreaking anguish, told his friend that he knew all.