“I am not the sort of woman you think me. Men are so fearfully ready to believe everything they hear about a woman ... and Heaven only knows what people may have said to you about me!... I alone can know how unhappy I have been in my marriage. My husband is good, yes ... but he never understood me. Still, all that is a far cry from running away with another man, and giving everybody the right to talk about me!”
And then all the phrases stored in his memory from his assiduous reading of society novels came pouring out.... What did marriage amount to anyway?... And how could what people said have any weight with her? It was her right to have real love in her life, and to take it wherever she might find it ... and it was just as surely her right to “live her own life,” side by side with a man capable of making life beautiful for her, of making it worthy of all her wonderful gifts!
And as these passages culled from hundreds of novels came out, one after the other, Moreno had the satisfaction of seeing that Elena too was familiar with all these arguments, and that she too was moved and softened (just as he was himself) by his literary but none the less impassioned eloquence.
What the marquesa was actually thinking was that she had carried on this pretense of resistance long enough, and that it was now time to give in gracefully so as to clear the way for a discussion of more immediate and urgent matters. As though unaware of what she was doing, she placed her hands on his shoulders, and spoke close to him, in a scarcely audible tone, and looking up at the farthest corner of the room, as though lost for the moment in a host of memories.
“Paris!” she murmured. “You know it from books, but they can give you only a feeble idea of what life there is really like. Oh, if you knew what a delicious experience is awaiting us there!”
Moreno took these words to be an acceptance of his proposals, and believed himself authorized by them to put his arms around her.
“You do accept then?... Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
But she gently pushed him away, checking his caresses, and with the gravity of demeanor of a woman who knows how to make clear and definite business arrangements, she said,
“If I should come to the point of saying ‘I accept’ it would be only on condition that we should leave this very day. Otherwise I may repent of my decision, and change my mind.... Besides, why should I stay in this hateful hole, when even my husband has abandoned me ... and I don’t know what has become of him ...?”
Moreno replied by nodding vigorously. They ought to take advantage of the train leaving that very afternoon. If they waited for the next, something to hinder them might develop before they could get away ... and the poor fellow actually believed that the marquesa was capable of repenting of her decision ... that he must make the most of this favorable moment.