“I will do all you wish me to do.” And Mme. Dupuis forthwith smiled tearfully on the hard, cold man who had so wantonly upset her happiness.
“Look,” she cried presently, as she wiped away the last hot drops, “it can’t be perceived that I have been crying.”
“That’s right, madame; that’s the way! I’ve great esteem for strong, single-hearted women; for wives who are truly Christian and self-sacrificing. And now that you’ve recovered your calmness, allow me to repeat to you that there really never was any reason for such great grief. What is a year? Gracious heavens! it is nothing. You will probably spend six months of it with your daughter, and the remaining six months you will pass here in the midst of your remembrances. George will not be more than half absent, for everything around you will bring him constantly before you; you will meet him at every step!”
“Take care, sir, take care!” said Mme. Dupuis, shaking her head at him with a faint smile, “lest, while you seek to comfort me, you increase the pain, ... which you cannot understand!”
“I beg your pardon, madame; I understand it perfectly,” replied Rouvière, an angry gleam lighting up his eyes for an instant, “and I thought that I was proving to you that I do.”
“O sir! believe me, I wish to cast no reflection either on your intelligence or your kindness; be quite sure of that!”
“Madame!” exclaimed the gentleman.
“But there are things,” continued Mme. Dupuis, giving at last free utterance to her feelings—“there are things which are not to be guessed. Have you thought how different your life has been to ours? You have been very wise; you have never allowed your heart to be bound by any of those ties whose number and strength are only recognized when they come to be broken. Yes, you may well say that everything here, the very hearthstone itself, forms a part of our united lives, of our remembrances, making our very thoughts the same. Everything around us loves us, everything is dear to us.... So, at least, I believed until now! A few minutes ago how dearly I prized the simple objects this room contains—all so familiar to us both during so many years, all bearing traces of our habits; each one reminding us of the projects, the pleasures, the sorrows we have shared together! And now they are nothing to me—they can be nothing to me but the ruins of a false happiness, the wrecks of a dream!”
“Really, madame, you exaggerate strangely,” replied Rouvière coldly; “admitting that this journey throws a shade over the present, the past, at least, remains intact.”
“You are mistaken, sir,” returned Mme. Dupuis. “This journey is doubtless not much in itself, but it answers cruelly a question which I have been accustomed to ask myself in secret nearly all my life: Is George happy? No, he was not happy; I alone was happy. I know the truth at last! He was resigned”—she struggled a moment to contain her emotion—“but he was not happy. And yet my heart—I feel it, I am sure of it—was worthy of his; in every other respect I was inferior to him, and I felt it bitterly. What companionship could a mind like his find in the conversation of a poor, provincial girl, ignorant of everything, knowing nothing but how to love him?”