“Blood on these exquisite hands would be a horror. Well! from henceforth I take their stains on mine.”
She faltered in real agitation:
“What are you going to do?”
The lovely lips were very near his own, as he said, still smiling in that curious way:
“I shall take the advice—not of a sister!”
She panted, shuddering closer.
“No, no! You must not——”
His eyes were fastened on her lips. Instinctively his own were drawn to them. His hot kiss would have burned them in another moment, but that a chill breath seemed to flutter at his ear, and in a flash, he saw the thing he was about to do in its true, ugly colors, and shame stung through and through him, and he drew back.
He had gathered of the fruit of Pleasure and plucked its gaudy flowers in the parterres where these things can be had at a price. He had emptied the frothy cup of Passion and paid its exorbitant bill. But though he may have coveted the mistress of another man, he had never yet desired his neighbor’s wife.
De Roux might be a reprobate and a libertine, but he was Henriette’s husband. And she was not the pure, unattainable planet, the chaste, immaculate divinity he had imagined her; but yet she was a wife. She felt the change in him—saw the fierce, eager light die out in his black eyes, and rose up, saying hurriedly: