She went on talking in a low voice, without daring to look at him, hurrying her words like a penitent anxious to get through with a difficult confession as soon as possible. On various occasions in talking with the Prince, the truth had come to her lips, and at the last moment the reticence of a woman still desirous of pleasing through her beauty had caused her to conceal the facts. But to whom could she reveal her secret better than to Michael? She considered him one of the family: he had received her in friendly fashion in her hour of need, when so many men had turned their backs on her. Besides, between a man and a woman, love is not the only feeling that can exist, as she had thought in the days of her mad youth. There were other less violent things, more placid and lasting: friendship, comradeship, and brotherly affection.
She paused for a moment, as though to gather strength.
"He is my son."
Michael, who was expecting some extraordinary, some monstrous revelation, worthy of her mad past, was unable to restrain an exclamation of astonishment:
"Your son!"
She nodded: "Yes, my son." With lowered eyes, she went on talking in the same nervous tone, as though she were making a confession. She went back over her past. How surprised she had been, how angry, at the cruel trick love had played in cutting off the best years of her life! Her indignation was like that of the citizens of Ancient Greece who began a riot when they learned of the pregnancy of a courtezan who was considered a national glory, a beauty whom the multitude came from afar to see, when she showed herself nude in the religious festivals. They were bent on killing her unborn child, as though it had been guilty of a sacrilege. Alicia, too, used to consider herself a living work of art, and wanted to punish the sacrilege of her child with death. What criminal attempts she had made to rid herself of the shame that was throbbing in her vitals! Besides, what tortures she had undergone in her efforts to hide it, to go on leading her life of pleasure as before, and suffer anything rather than permit her secret to escape! Returning from parties where she had seen herself admired as formerly yet always with the dread that her secret had been discovered, she would fall into fits of homicidal rage and rebelliously curse the being that persisted in living within her; and in paroxysms of wild hysteria she would devise ways and means of encompassing its destruction.
There were tears in her voice as she recalled these scenes.
"But how about your husband?" Michael asked.
"We separated at that time. He could tolerate my love affairs in silence: he could pretend not to know about them ... but a child that wasn't his own...!"
She recalled the attitude of the Duke de Delille. He had shown a dignity worthy of him. There had been many deceived husbands in his family: it had almost become a tradition of nobility, an historic distinction. He did not feel dishonored by selling his name in getting married in order to increase the pleasures and comforts of his life. His name that belonged to him was a tool to work with. But it was impossible for him to let that name get out of his family, to give it to an intruder to continue the line. His forefathers had had many illegitimate children; but it had never occurred to any of his gay women ancestors to introduce into the family descendants in whose creation their husbands could assume no responsibility whatever.