"No, my friend."
"But you are not angry with him."
"Why should I be angry with him?"
"And you are thinking of him."
"I am thinking of you, Julien."
"But you haven't forgotten him."
"I could not forget anyone who had done me good, even if he ceased to exist. Don't reproach me, you who have done me so much more good!"
Julien was honest enough to respect Annette's frankness, and in his heart he felt her nobility. This for him was an unaccountable spectacle, the unwonted dignity of which revealed to him a new world—the new woman. But another part of his nature was in revolt. His masculine instincts were wounded. His Catholic and bourgeois prejudices were horrified. The idea that he had, that he continued to have, of Annette was poisoned with degrading suspicions. Instead of being surer of a woman who gave up her secret to him with complete loyalty, he was less sure of a woman whose past weakness had been revealed to him. He doubted her fidelity in the future. He thought of that other living man who had possessed her and whose child would be his. He was afraid of being deceived, he was afraid of being ridiculous. He was mortified, and he could not forgive her.
As soon as Annette fully perceived the dangerous struggle that was going on in Julien's mind and saw that the hope she had formed was menaced, she trembled. She was utterly in the grip of the love she had provoked. All her power of loving, all her capacity for happiness, she had centred in this Julien. And in truth she had half deceived herself. But she had only half deceived herself. Julien was not unworthy of her; his qualities were real; they deserved love. Different as they were, they would be able to live together with a little mutual effort to understand and tolerate each other—and a little suffering, no doubt; and was a little suffering too much to pay for a firm affection? Annette would have been good for him; she would have invigorated him; she would have been that great wind of confidence in life that would have swelled his sails and carried him whither he could never have gone without her. And Julien's delicate tenderness, his respect for woman, his moral purity, even that candid religious faith which Annette did not share, would have been wholesome for her; they would have given her passionate nature a basis of security, the peace of home and of a soul of which one is sure.
Ah, the misery of hearts that miss their destiny through a misapprehension which their passion exaggerates, that know it and reproach themselves for it and always will reproach themselves, but will never yield the point that separates them just because they love too much to make a moral concession to which they would disdainfully consent with those to whom they are indifferent!