“Why are you going away? To pass a fortnight without coming and then go away like this! Really, I can’t understand you. What have we done to you here, that you should stop coming?”
I stood like a statue. That soft voice, in which there was reproach and affection at the same time, that hand which still held mine, and those eyes which looked into mine with a fascinating expression—all those things startled me, but also caused me a thrill of happiness hitherto unknown to me. One must have loved truly to understand all that I felt at that moment. I squeezed her hand frantically, and it returned the pressure; then she gently withdrew it, still looking at me. All this was the affair of a moment, but that moment decided the rest of my life. Eugénie loved me; she had read my heart, and I felt that I could not live without her, that Eugénie henceforth would be all in all to me.
I thought no more about going away. Eugénie returned to her seat and Gerval came to speak to her; but I was not jealous any more, Gerval had ceased to be offensive to me; it had required only an instant to change the whole current of my thoughts. I returned to Eugénie’s side. While talking with Gerval, she succeeded in looking only at me. The young man suggested to her that they should sing together. She looked at me again, and seemed to ask me if that would be agreeable to me. I added my entreaties to Gerval’s. She consented to go to the piano, but on her way there she passed close to me and our hands met. When she sang with Gerval a duet in which two lovers sing to each other of love, her eyes addressed to me the words that she sang. Ah! when two hearts understand each other, there are a thousand ways of proving it.
After that duet, Gerval proposed another; she declined on the ground of a sore throat, and returned to her seat by my side. Gerval remained for some time; it seemed to me that he was less merry, less sparkling that evening than usual. At last he said good-night and left.
I drew nearer to Eugénie; she still held her work, but she was not working; our eyes met often; we talked in undertones; I had so many things to say to her now, and yet we exchanged only a few words; but our glances were more eloquent than our speech.
How rapidly the time passed! I was so happy with her! The card players finished their game, and Madame Dumeillan called to her daughter to give her her purse. The others were going away, and I must needs do the same.
“I hope that it will not be so long before you come again,” said Madame Dumeillan kindly. And Eugénie, as she passed me, whispered:
“You will come to-morrow, won’t you?”
My eyes alone answered, but she must have understood them; I saw a loving smile upon her lips. I went away, drunk with love and pleasure. I returned home hardly touching the ground. It seemed to me that my happiness bore me aloft and transported me to the third heaven,—that is to say, if there is a third heaven.
As I went upstairs, I thought of my young lovers on the fifth floor. I had neglected them sadly for some time! But I had been constantly depressed and jealous and in ill humor, and the picture of their love would simply have aggravated my suffering. Now I could safely go to see them. I should not be sad and gloomy with them, and they would understand my happiness.