The most extraordinary results are always brought about by the simplest causes, just as the most unexpected things are always logical happenings. A little reflection would oftener than not have been sufficient to prevent the one and to foresee the other. But the characteristic of passion is that its object absorbs its attention completely. It takes no note of the fact that other passions exist outside itself, as furious as itself, as uncontrollable with which it must come in contact. It is a train flying along under full steam, with no signal to warn it that another train is coming in the opposite direction on the same line.
Swept away by a torrent of suffering, wrapped up in his thoughts during this week of mortal agony, Olivier had not noticed that there was a being near him living, trembling, suffering also. Monomania is full of such egoism, of such forgetfulness. He had not noticed the working of his wife's mind, nor foreseen the natural possibility that, exasperated by her suspicions, Berthe might appeal to her husband's friend for help, that she might implore Hantefeuille to aid her! This was just what she finally did, and the interview between them had as result one easy to prognosticate—that the young wife's jealousy tore off the bandage that covered the eyes of her husband's unwitting friend. In one minute Pierre understood everything!
This tragedy—such an interview was one, and one that was big with a terrible dénouement—was brought about by a last mad imprudence on Olivier's part. The eve of his meeting with Madame de Carlsberg he had manifested a more than usually feverish agitation. Not one of the indications of this state of mind had escaped his wife's notice. He had walked about in his room almost all the night, sitting down at intervals to try and write the letter he was going to send to Ely in the morning. Through the thin dividing partition of the room Berthe, awake and her senses acutely tense, heard him walk, sit down, rise, sit down again, crumpling up and tearing papers, walk about again, crush up and tear other paper. She knew that he was writing. "To her," she thought. Ah! how she longed to go, to open the door, which was not even locked, to enter the room, and to know if the anxiety that had consumed her during the last week was well founded or not, to learn if Olivier had really met again the mistress he had known in Rome, to discover if this woman was the cause of the agitated crisis he was going through, if, yes or no, that former mistress was the Baroness Ely she had so much longed to meet in one of the salons at Cannes.
But, without her being able to say anything, her husband arranged something for every day, and they had not paid a single visit or dined a single time with any of their friends. She was too intelligent not to have understood at once that Olivier did not wish to mix with the society of Cannes, and that he would not, on the other hand, go away from the town. Why? A single premiss would have enabled Berthe to solve the enigma, but she had not that premiss. Her wifely instinct, however, was not to be deceived—there was a mystery. With an infallible certainty all pointed to this fact.
By dint of thinking and observing, she came to this conclusion: "This woman is here. He regrets her, and yet is afraid of her.—He longs for her, and that is why we remain here and why he is so unhappy.—He is afraid of her, and that is why he will not let me mix in society here."
How many times during the week she had been tempted to tell him that such a situation was too humiliating, that he must choose between his wife and his former mistress, that she had determined to go away, to return to Paris, to be once more at home among her own people!
And then Hautefeuille was there, always making a third; Hautefeuille, who certainly knew all the truth! She hated him all the more in proportion as she suffered from her helpless ignorance. When alone with Olivier an invincible timidity prostrated her. She had a shamed terror of owning that she had discovered the name of the Baroness Ely. She dreaded having to own she had seen the portrait, as though she had been guilty of some vile spying. She trembled with fear lest some irreparable word should be spoken in the explanation that must follow. The unknown in her husband's character terrified her. She had often heard the histories of households broken up forever during the first year of married life. Suppose he should abandon her, return to the other in a fit of rage? The poor child felt her heart grow cold at the mere idea.
She loved Olivier! And even without any question of love, how could she accept the idea of seeing her conjugal happiness wrecked with the scandal of a separation, she so calm, so reasonable, so truly pure and simple-minded?
Again during the miserable night preceding Olivier's meeting with Ely she had listened to the restlessness of her husband and had kept silent, in spite of her suffering, of her sense of desertion, of her jealousy! Every footstep in the adjoining room made her pray, made her long for strength to resist the temptation to have finished forever with all her suffering. A dozen times she compelled herself to begin the comforting prayer, "Our Father—" and every time when she arrived at the sentence, "As we forgive them that have trespassed against us," her entire being had revolted.
"Forgive that woman? Never! never! I cannot." An almost insignificant detail—are there any insignificant details in such crises?—completed the tension of her nerves. Toward nine o'clock her husband, ready dressed for going out, entered her room. He had a letter in his hand slipped between his gloves and his hat. Berthe could not read the address on the envelope, but she saw that it bore no stamp. With her heart beating wildly with expectation of the reply he would make to the simple question, she said to her husband:—