Chapter VI: Part II: I (3)

"June 13th: In inviting her to my home, I had no other thought than to establish pleasant relations and to give Elizabeth a friend of stimulating influence, because of her active intelligence and the charm of her society. No, truly, I had no other thought. Had she even inspired in me a more passionate interest, I should never have permitted this emotion to go beyond that inner sanction, where each one retains his individual liberty. I should have conquered my exaltation and bitterness alone.

"Well, after Anne de Sézery's departure, I asked Elizabeth her impression. I had told her that morning that Mlle. de Sézery, completely crushed by fate, had remolded her life.

"'Yes, I know she has been pretty,' she answered. 'But now she has too little hair and too big a mouth.'

"I had not noticed it. But I knew her eyes, her face, her figure. Why so much injustice? I was not seeking a detailed description. When everything has been made easy for us, when we have exerted neither effort nor will-power, why show ourselves to be so miserably contemptuous? There are words so unkind that they become fixed in our memory like milestones and serve to measure the distance which separates us from those who have uttered them."

"June 25th: I made no attempt after this setback to invite Anne de Sézery to my house again. We are near neighbors: I am going to call on her in the Rue Cassini. It is a little deserted street, hidden by the trees on the Avenue de l'Observatoire. No one goes through it, and one might think oneself very far from Paris. We are both going away--she to London, where she must discontinue her former life, and I to the country. Each visit should have been the last. But day by day our departure was deferred. In the evening after my work I meet her returning from her walk, and we both find relaxation in a few minutes' conversation.

"'In England,' she had said almost at the beginning of this new friendship, 'I could see you frequently without any difficulty. Here, I do not know ...'

"'But since we are going away?'

"With no relatives, she was lost in Paris, as I was in my unhappy home life."

"June 27th: Little Marie Louise asked me why I no longer take her out walking in the evening."

"June 29th: Visited the Carnavalet Museum with Anne de Sézery. The story of the Revolution is an endless source of pathos which one can never exhaust.

"We have agreed that next winter I shall show her an unknown Paris, the Paris which bears traces of the long centuries and of great men. With her, interchange of thought is unlimited. There is always a little embarrassment when I arrive; the first subject of conversation dispels it. She assures me that I make her live an intellectual life such as one does not know in London."

"June 30th: The farewell.

"'You will marry in England.'

"'I think not.'

"'However, you will marry.'

"'I am thirty. I am afraid I shall be unable to make up my mind. When I was quite young I expected so much life and love.'

"'And now?'

"'Now I demand more.'

"'Would you not come to Dauphiné?'

"'To what purpose? Go to Saint Ismier for me some day. You will tell me when you return if the château has not been repaired, if the trees in the park have not been pruned or cut down, if my country of former days is not made unrecognizable. I hope it is not.'

"My good-by was so inadequate. The feeling of separation crushed the words on my lips. But she? English habits have accustomed her to these companionships, to these friendships, which are less common, more difficult in France. As a result of my consideration and her natural candor, I trust that ours may last for a long time."

"Saint Martin d'Uriage--July. A letter from London, confident and calm, too calm, calm like the summer days that I detest when not a leaf stirs in the dry air."

"August: Now her letters come regularly from the other side of the Channel. The appearance of English stamps is accepted as a matter of course. Is it not natural that I should have made acquaintances during my last voyage?"

"September: From week to week this strange friendship draws us closer together, despite the distance. And I am adapting myself to accept its unrealized desires and incompleteness, for the sake of the interest it adds to my life. In these September days whose changing freshness is at the same time an indication of decline, I feel I am unfaithful to her, in forgetting her for the gentle fall of the first leaves, which drop off without apparent reason for the distressing peace of the evening. Unless it be that without my knowledge she is giving a new interest to these impressions! Our love is growing, so that it forms a part of all our thoughts which scatter to the four winds, and is influenced by nature, which, by ceaseless activity, awakens our emotions and then focusses all our power of feeling. Have I written correctly: 'Our love'?"

"September 28th: Her letter is dated from Paris. She has left England forever. 'I am leaving ten years behind me,' she tells me--'the most beautiful years of one's life which have given me the impression of years of more mature age. Am I an old maid or a débutante? I no longer know. I see my youth behind me and I have made nothing of it. I have lived so much, and yet so little. I feel happy, care-free and weak at the same time. From this side of the water I lost all my self-confidence, and I find myself unsettled. I miss the English life. In France you do not know the joy of the open air, of independence, of the honesty of friendship. So we have given each other our friendship: do you know that that means much, and is a very serious pact? I fear that you did not realize it, and before we meet again I want to remind you....'

"Was the tone of my last letters unconsciously impassioned? My thoughts fly to her like arrows, and do they not strike her heart?"

"Paris, October 15th: I have returned to Paris to make some historical researches without which I could not go on with my books. I left my wife and children at Grenoble; they will join me in the beginning of November.

"No, I came back to see her, and I see her every day at the same hour in the evening."

"October 18th: We have had our first discussion. She had heard during the day of the remarriage of a friend in England who had divorced her husband.

"'Has she children?' I asked.

"'Yes, why?'

"'Because I believe children make marriage indissoluble.'

"Surprised, she asked me:

"'Is that a religious conviction?'

"'I have no religion. Catholicism, moreover, does not permit divorce under any circumstances. There are other reasons.'

"I explained mine to her, influenced by the interest of society and the primordial importance of the family. She naturally believed in the rights of the individual.

"'We must above all be sincere. A home cannot exist without truth.'

"In Dauphiné she had already condemned those unchangeable principles to which one cannot give expression to-day without audacity. Life has only served to confirm her desire of revolt.

"'Our feelings may change,' I said to her. 'Facts which are the result of them do not change. These facts have engendered responsibility, created obligations.'

"'They do not necessitate the loss of one's liberty.'

"'But there are no free men.'

"'Then is there no longer truth?'

"I defended this miserable lie, so derided, which insures men's peace in every society, because one is not capable of hearing the truth. One minute she detested me--I could not bear it, and I discontinued that tone of sarcasm which allows us to treat serious subjects too lightly.

"'We have liberty only in the inner sanction. The chief aim of marriage is not the happiness of husband and wife.'

"She started.

"'Certainly not. It is the foundation of a family, the child. That alone gives marriage a positive value. After the birth of the child life ceases to be a search for happiness. That event ends that period of sentimental restlessness of which Nature no longer takes notice. And if it is not suppressed, at any rate, it maintains a fixed course from which we can never stray with impunity.'

"As she listened to me without replying, I picked up a volume of Byron which she was translating.

"'Be careful of these romanticists. Their bouquets are poisoned. They make the world reflect their point of view. They believe we have every right to the highest realization, and that our personality creates the worth of the world. The more unbridled it is, the more powerful it seems to them. They add the decadence of their emotions to that of their minds.'

"From intellectual habit, I waxed enthusiastic in this defense of the social order, to which I have devoted so much thought and effort. She looked at me with her golden eyes, which can assume fleeting expression of unutterable woe--when they become like those of wild beasts in their cage: she said nothing, but her look disturbed me.

"'So,' she said at last, 'if love comes too late, it is not worthy of a sacrifice?'

"I had not foreseen what one must always foresee with a woman, however intelligent: the immediate application of our general ideas to the present experiences.

"'Yes,' she answered in her musical voice, 'the earth bums a long time with a slow fire. And one can always break one's heart. Is it not so?'

"These words were uttered in such an impersonal manner that any personal allusion was excluded. I could not discover in them the confession I was trembling to find. I was silent. In venturing into this discussion, I did not expect to be struck with my own weapons.

"Darkness, although not precipitated by the half-stripped trees near the avenue, was gradually coming on. And I carried away from her home an uncertainty, an unspeakable distress."

"October 20th: Nobody knows I have returned to Paris. However, finding Mlle. de Sézery's door shut, I paid a visit to my old friend, Doctor Heaume, who is incurably ill, as a result of excessive expenditure of mental energy. I found him seated, or rather strapped to his work table from which he no longer has strength to rise. Only his eyes are alive and pitiful. One knows from a distance that his cheeks are already paralyzed. With superhuman energy, he is completing his treatise on nervous diseases. Then he will die.

"'If I cease working,' he said to me, 'my trouble is unbearable.'

"His pain is an unfortunate marriage which has destroyed him day by day. On account of his children he has borne everything without a murmur. Yesterday I admired him: to-day I pity him."

"October 22nd: The lack of outdoor life has broken down Anne's health. We now go out together every afternoon. On our return, we have tea and she sings Grieg or Schumann for me, or songs new to me, of coming Russian musicians, Mouscorgsky or Rimsky Korsakof. Her musical memory makes it possible to leave the lamps unlighted until night has come on. In the twilight one is so happy. But in her dark drawing-room her powerful voice is cramped, as is her soul in life.

"Paris is kind to intimate sentiments. One feels oneself as lost and free as in a desert.

"Apropos of some character in history or a novel, we often speak of love. I concluded by asking her in the most serious manner this question which was tormenting me:

"'You have already loved?'

"'Oh, already,' she replied, laughing. 'At thirty, my friend?'

"'That is not an answer.'

"'Well, yes. Does that interest you?'

"'Very much. Many times?'

"'No, once. And other times a little.'

"'Tell me.'

"But she immediately became serious. 'To tell about one's love means to give up part of it.'

"'Are you still in love?'

"'Leave me my secrets.'

"This scene took place in the Luxembourg Garden at the close of day. The girl had turned her head away. Before her and back of the trees, stirred by the autumn winds, there were lights in the sky. A roll of drums warned us that it was time to leave. I looked at the graceful, supple body which has already been embraced. How could I have doubted it? Her woman's charm is so complete. I shall always see that spot where I have been jealous, so horribly jealous."

"October 23rd: I am no longer master of my feelings. In the midst of my work, I must let my thoughts go free--they may return wounded or tired. And I see myself going adrift.

"I did not seek complex happiness. She whose outlook on life I have tried to broaden will never know how she has disappointed my hopes. I did not ask the impossible of her. She was satisfied to accept her lot. But so often one does not know the meaning of that word: to accept.

"Am I quite sure that I am not seeking excuses for the passion which absorbs me? Elizabeth has held herself aloof from what is essential to my life. Had she not done so, would I be more certain of my heart? There is always within us something unknown which circumstances reveal to us, and surprised, we find ourselves to be on the borders of youth, richer in desire and weaker in will.

"I observe this ebb and flow of contradictory emotions. Does not each and everyone of them indicate some portion of my ego? Happy are those who realize unity within themselves and know their own limitations! I have left off the work I had in hand to undertake a new work. I am applying myself enthusiastically to it, and when I stop short, I am exhausted. I find myself in turn more powerful and weaker. Exaltation is only a transitory condition, and without it I am helpless."

"October 25th: As each day passes, it speaks to me of separation, of absence. The restriction of our liberty will be painful to me. And the precarious season adds its restlessness to that growing in me.

"This evening it was so fine that we went to the Bois in an open carriage. It takes us a long time to choose the horses when we drive together--she will not permit the coachman to whip them.

"'Where are the English vehicles?' she asks with regret.

"We walked side by side in the Allée of Mortemart, near Auteuil. It is a road little frequented, and there the dead leaves had not been swept away. They were heaped up at the edges. As the wind rose, they began to turn about in a whirl and then lay down again. Those remaining on the branches rustled with a crackling noise. We waited to see them fall. When we returned, Anne pointed them out to me:

"'It seems as though we are abandoning defenseless beings.'

"And just then one of them broke off, hesitated an instant, then blew on my knees, as a butterfly struck by death. It was a golden beech leaf. I looked at Anne and noticed her pallor.

"'You are cold?' I asked.

"'A little,' she answered.

"The sun had set without our noticing it. Dampness was rising from the ground; the morning rain had not had time to dry. The mist was still under the trees. The air we were breathing was full of malaria germs. Lacking a better covering, I asked the coachman for one, and wrapped it about her shoulders. She did not refuse it and smiled to thank me. She had never seemed more delicately charming to me. At the Porte Dauphiné we found a closed carriage."

"October 28th: Why did I speak? She had accepted my invitation to spend the day at Chantilly. To-morrow we should not be able to go. To-morrow my house will no longer be empty. We had lunched at the keeper's near the Château of the White Queen. The weather was so fine that we were able to remain outdoors a long time, and we had a good view of the pond of Comelle which continues along the Thève and the zigzag slopes of the forest. We could even see, standing out in the heart of the wood, the black tree-trunks growing more and more slender, the ground being covered with a mass of their leaves. However, they still retained sufficient foliage to show us from a distance, like a bouquet, their varied tones of gold and reddish copper.

"I suggested that we walk along an unsanded path as far as the crossways of the Table. About her head and over her neck floated one of those white veils such as women are wearing nowadays, which seem befitting to a certain type of face, as sea gulls to a ship on the water. From time to time I watched her as she walked. She trod so gently on the dead leaves that they scarcely rustled. I followed the delicacy of her movements. In her long falcon eyes flashed sparks of pleasure. The sun was already setting in the woods through which we could see the horizon; the days have grown so short. A pleasant forest whose extent is not overwhelming like the German forests--whose order rests and soothes, instead of suffocating one, and which invites us to the hunt, to merry-making, to sentimental walks. A stag, crossing an avenue, looked at us fearlessly. At the crossways of the Table we saw twelve short roads comparable under their light archways to a dozen slender rays.

"Our return was much slower. I felt her nearness to me. I should only have had to bend a little to take her in my arms. But the expression of her eyes often seems somewhat distant to me. I walked more slowly and said to her:

"'Why do we realize life so powerfully when we are together?'

"'Because we are friends.'

"She understood immediately whither I was tending. Her face is so expressive that I read her impressions at once. She was overwrought. She tried to stop me.

"'Say no more,' she begged.

"It was too late. She realized, even if she did not already know it, the place she filled in my heart. With teeth clenched, trembling and shrinking, taken unawares as a stream which freezes, she listened to my love. Was I mistaken in believing I saw her grow and brighten? She did not hide from me her agitation, nor even her joy.

"'I should have interrupted you; I had not the courage. Forgive me. I have not been happy, and it is so inspiring for a woman to hear a man like you say these things, which have entered into my soul as the sun into the forest. I did not know how to resist them. Be indulgent with me--why have you come so late into my life?'

"'Too late?'

"'Yes.'

"'I had forgotten. You still love?'

"She dismissed my emotion with a smile.

"'Yes, perhaps.'

"'Let us go back,' I said, somewhat brusquely. 'The train to Paris leaves at five.'

"'We shall take the next one.'

"'No, Anne, it is better to go back now.'

"And I explained to her gently, as an arrangement of necessity, that it was better that we did not see each other again, at least, not for a while. I was amazed at the peace which followed my exaltation. She protested energetically, almost violently.

"'No, no, I cannot lose you. You have become indispensable to my moral life. Since I met you my dull days have taken on color. I do not wish to fall back into my old state of indifference.'

"The unexpected outburst surprised me.

"'But how about me?'

"'Cannot a man love unselfishly? I shall help you.'

"'To forget you?'

"'Yes. You will have no difficulty. In seeing me frequently you will not fail to see that I am no longer beautiful. A sincere friendship is not impossible. Will you not try? I ask it of you.'

"Her request was disconcerting insistence. By what strange and sudden change was she now pleading with me? I concluded by saying:

"'Let us decide nothing, Anne. Circumstances will decide for us.'

"'No, not circumstances. We! I assure you that we can.'

"During this discussion darkness had come on. Between the branches the sky was crimson. We had to hurry to escape the cold. In the carriage we looked at each other without speaking. The light which served as a background to the tree-trunks grew fainter by degrees, and the forest embraced us with added mystery. The wheels made no noise; only the sound of the horses' hoofs could be heard sinking into the thick bed of sand as we rode along the avenue. It was a dull, regular sound. Nothing disturbed our emotion. I took her hand which was still ungloved and raised it to my lips. It was frozen, but its touch was like fire to me.

"'Friends, are we not?' she said to me later as she left me.

"She smiled. I feared to promise more than I could perform, so I said nothing, nothing. The impressions of nature, of art which I have enjoyed alone all these years, that I wanted to enjoy alone, to gain a deeper understanding of them, I now share with her. She has broadened my outlook on life."

"November: I have hardly been out of the house for a fortnight. I tried to become absorbed in my work. At the time I generally went to see her, I feel as though fever had attacked me. No longer able to bear it, I told her so last evening.

"'Why do you not come?' she replied, laughing. 'I shall give you some quinine.'"

"December: Every time I come back from the Rue Cassini, it seems to me, as I enter my house, that I put on a mask or hide something I have stolen. It is a sensation of cruel restraint. But the welcome I receive dissipates it at once. There is no comparison whatsoever between the intellectual stimulation which I experience in my unlimited conversations with Anne, and the colorless calm which awaits me at home. I now feel the need of that thought and our excitement to make me know that I am alive. And I am growing accustomed to this sort of double life.

"How can a woman so blindly accept the deepest of all separations, the moral separation? After more than seven years of marriage, I am still amazed at it. She lacks curiosity as she does distrust. The daily round satisfies her. Just now I was studying her under the lamplight. She is scarcely thirty, and her expressionless face reveals no doubt of the heart, no personal thought. She can see in me neither a new joy, nor despair. I am all in all to her, but I do not know to-day how I have been able to please her. I no longer think of her love. Nevertheless I am so weak or so complex that her youth still touches me, and that my desire to animate her, futile as it is, is not entirely crushed. I have loved her too much for her happiness or grief ever to be indifferent to me, yet I am giving myself with delight to the danger which threatens us. The younger we are, the less we can discern in reality the object of our devotion. We modify it, we recreate it, and later, when we awake to our mistake, we blame the object, instead of our capacity to idealize. We should know how to make use of the truth, which, although different, still has its attractions. But we do not forgive it for having deceived us.

"What I am passionately fond of never interests Elizabeth. She does not know or else she disregards the treasures of life. Either through thoughtlessness or indifference, she takes no part in it and narrows her life, when I try to enlarge it. We live together: she knows nothing of me and never will. There is neither discussion nor intimacy between us. It is the peace of the household, of so many households unconsciously divided against themselves. Children and the active life of Paris give to this secret divorce an appearance of harmony."

"December 28th: Marie Louise and Philippe are asked to two children's matinées on the same day. Philippe would try to get out of going to both of them, but his sister will give up neither. She is offered her choice: she goes from one to the other, and as soon as we wish to carry out her decision, she takes it back. Her desire for amusement is not gratified by one affair."

"January 1st, 1905: What has this New Year in store for us?

"Anne is very sad on these days of family gatherings, and wishes to hide it from me.

"'One cannot help regretting Christmas,' she said to me with a smile, belied by the drooping corners of her mouth.

"Two or three English friends on a trip came to greet her effusively. After they had gone, I said to her:

"'Everybody kisses to-day. Is it not my turn?'

"She began to laugh.

"'There is no mistletoe, my friend. Ah, if there were only mistletoe!'

"'Would you go under it with me?'

"'In Paris your drawing-rooms are so small.'

"My exaltation of the Autumn has quieted itself, or rather has become as the red leaves inlaid in a Galle vase that I gave her as a souvenir. That which I thought impossible is materializing little by little. A lasting tie ill-defined and somewhat uncertain is binding us. I prefer her glance to her eyes, her voice to her lips, her friendship to my desire."

"January 2nd: Dr. Heaume died yesterday, regardless of so untimely a date. I saw him in his bed. He had regained his stature. His face was impressively calm, with a serenity which startles one--yes, startles and attracts--on features that have only appeared sorrowful and tortured.

"In reality, he adored life. It was his only faith. Instead of finishing his treatise on nervous diseases, he had begun a study of the development of the passions. He multiplied the reasons for prolonging his life and did not fear failing his masterpiece as everyone had failed him.

"At his side, his wife was weeping as if she had always recognized the rare force of that spirit now fled.

"Overcome by the realization of so much lost power, I went to share my reflections with Anne. Even our silence is the echo of our thoughts. At home mine have no echo."

"January: Visited the Conciergie together. One of her ancestors was killed in this court on the first day of the September massacres.

"'He once appeared to me,' she told me.

"At the beginning of our conversations there is always a short digression. Her indifferent manner keeps me on the alert; then I find again her candor and her deep soul. It always requires time to harmonize.

"She does not try to convince me. I ask at all hazards:

"'Where and when?'

"'Do you want to know? It was in a lawyer's office.'

"'An extraordinary place for a ghost.'

"'Yes, they were advising me to give up my father's estate. He looked at me severely and showed me this wound. The dead always advise us to consent. They don't have to bear the consequences. At that time I thought that there were no useless sacrifices.'

"'And now?'

"'All sacrifices are useless.'

"Her golden eyes fixed me boldly as if she were defying me. I recalled her look of pride in London when she told me she had paid the last family debt.

"Along the quay, behind Notre Dame, she talked to me of her childhood, of her early youth in Dauphiné. It is a subject to which she seldom refers. Her recollection of our meeting is more exact than mine. She recalls forgotten circumstances. I was shy, unsociable and proud in those days.

"'A little absurd, is it not?'

"She replies gravely:

"'I recognized your superiority.'

"'What superiority?'

"She is seeking a definition, which is always embarrassing.

"'The passion to see clearly, but Philippe Lagier had it too; above all the power of never knowing a state of indifference, the wonderful instinct of all the innumerable resources of life.'

"'Thank you,' I said, smiling. 'You are too kind.'

"But she retained her serious expression."

"January 26th: It is all over! Our walks in Paris, our free talks at the fireside, at least for a time. She leaves to-night for London to visit Miss Pearson for three weeks!

"Something more than absence saddens our farewells. Shall we find intact on her return this rather diverse friendship in which we have known such rare joy? I tell her of my doubts.

"'I am half English,' she replies. 'The country is so attractive to me because of the habit of self-government one acquires there and the evidence of honesty in the ideal of friendship. Do you not owe to it this friendship of which you are speaking? A Frenchwoman would never have asked you for it.'

"'Is this friendship singular, Anne? I know nothing of your life over there. Only, I am uneasy. Uneasy and jealous.'

"'Have you no confidence in me? You have the essential.'

"'And the rest?'

"'The rest is not worth while.'

"There is something in these words which leaves a deep melancholy. Before leaving her I looked at the ceiling.

"'Still no mistletoe?'

"She laughed with all her youthfulness.

"'Still no mistletoe!'

"'I shall bring some for your return.'

"'Not till next Christmas, mind!'"

"March 26th: When I saw her again two months later, I verified the presentiment I had on her departure. Something inexplicable has changed our relations. Anne is more reserved, and again at moments almost wild. Will time give back to us the harmonious peace of former days?

"Her letters, though long and frequent, full of details of her daily doings, make me realize this. Another feeling absorbs her, or with her love of independence, she does not care to commit herself."

"April 2nd: Little by little the same passionate taste for conversation draws us together. She is exalted, and I find her again as she was, and all of a sudden her expression becomes tense, as if she regretted giving way to her feelings. There is a tragedy going on in her of which I know nothing."

"April 5th: I know now. And after the shock of my discovery, I continue in that happy state of languor in which one prolongs and deepens an emotion, desiring to retain it in the present, rather than abandon it to the past.

"I received a letter from Miss Pearson to-day begging me to use my influence with Anne, in favor of a marriage with that Lord Howard, who has asked her so often. There is no longer any thought of M. Portal. In England questions concerning fortune, position and family connections are of the greatest importance. Miss Pearson enumerated to me the advantages of such a union, which would place our friend in her proper rank. She appealed with authority to the confidence Mlle. de Sézery had in me.

"A curious mission which has upset me! However, I went to see Anne at my usual time, and without comment, gave her the letter. I still see the flame which flashed from her eyes.

"'Miss Pearson,' she said angrily to me, 'is hateful. She had no right to--Why did she keep me from going to India?'

"'You wanted to go?'

"'Yes, last month.'

"'Without telling me? Why?'

"'I do as I please.'

"This cruel suppression of our friendship offended me. I rose to leave.

"'So you will be able to decide without me.'

"She hastened to detain me. I have never seen her so overwrought, so pale. Her long golden eyes were veiled. I am powerless before their sorrowful expression.

"'No, no,' she said. 'You will choose for me.'

"Conciliated by her agitation, I made a gesture of despair.

"'Oh! I ...'

"'Speak!'

"'How could I live without you?'

"And the fire instantly reappeared in her glance and lit up her face, which, in its changing expression, revealed her thoughts. I could not fail to notice it.

"'Never mention this marriage to me again,' she said.

"I had recovered possession of myself and pleaded another cause.

"'It is not a question of myself, Anne. This marriage would give you, if not the joy of youth, at least peace and that distraction which one readily finds in a circle suitable to one's tastes and personal value.'

"'You no longer love me?'

"'There was no question of my love,' I said.

"'You would give it up? I am no longer capable of a sacrifice. Life has demanded top many of me.'

"'From you?'

"'You did not understand? For ten years...."

"She was quite close to me. I had only to hold out my arms for her to come and rest against my heart, with her head on my shoulder.

"'_Anne_--'

"'Let us say no more. I am so ashamed of myself--'

"I felt her all a-quiver. How long did we remain so? Those wonderful moments had a greater weight--the weight of years. The April evening was prolonging its light, its invitation of Spring. Our love made us tremble together. When she gained control of herself she lifted her bowed head and smiled like a young, cajoling girl:

"'You did not bring the mistletoe?'

"I touched her burning cheek. I wished to touch her lips, to possess that which had betrayed her secret. She did not permit me. With a quick movement she tore herself away from me.

"'No, no,' she murmured, frightened, 'our love must suffice.'

"'It is my first kiss.'

"Surprised, I repeated. 'The first?'

"She blushed delightfully.

"'Yes, at my age. Now I should like to die. It would be the last.'

"'Anne!'

"Thus our happiness was tinged with melancholy. How should we now unite the past with the future? Do not let us look so far ahead. Let us content ourselves to-night in exhausting the strength of our emotion. To-morrow we shall make lasting resolutions."

"April 6th: Eleven o'clock at night. My home is broken up. I should never have destroyed it. Anne knew it. I cannot write of this scene. I am crushed. Shall I never see Marie Louise and Philippe again? Shall I allow them to be torn away from me? Elizabeth has misunderstood, belittled and lowered our love; so I have rebelled. She has reproached me for lying to her, and she was incapable of understanding or hearing the truth about our life. It is her desire. I am free. And this thought obsesses me: if Anne were not to give herself to me now that my love is the only thing left to me--"

V

ELIZABETH'S AWAKENING

The remainder of the note-book consisted of blank pages. Albert had given up his diary on that date, and the sudden silence, after so long a confession, spoke volumes. Elizabeth turned over the leaves till the last, seeking an excess of sadness with which to avoid reflection. At last, she lost all external pretext of escaping from her own thoughts. She looked at the clock: it was three in the morning. Her body on fire, she dragged herself mechanically to the window and opened it. Fainting, she sought relief, she wanted to call for help. The peace of night prevented her crying aloud. In place of the moonlight she had left, she found herself face to face with darkness, and went back to put out the lamp. Then she rested on her elbows.

She could distinguish only the vague slope of the meadows and the dark mass of the mountain on the other side of the valley. But, over the black arch stretched like a velvet cloth, countless stars stood out in relief. She saw such nights every time she returned from an evening party. Nevertheless, this one was different--new. She inhaled its sweet breath eagerly. The air breathed out by the rose trees in the garden, and the pine trees in the park laden with a healthy scent, caressed her like the hand of a friend. She felt a cold delicate touch on her overheated cheek, and leaned forward to get the full benefit of its relief. And in her gratitude she noticed the different lights, the continued throbbing of the stars whose multitude had never interested her. One particularly, which was nearing the summit of Les Quatre Seigneurs rapidly changed color, being alternately green and rose like an opal. So the night, which, in her indifference, had thus far seemed only lifeless chaos, stirred itself, took pity on her, comforted her as a living being, as the only living being capable of lightening her despair.

But this same night, whose pure calmness she invoked, was wrapping in its coolness of closing summer, the love of Albert and Anne. By a sudden change she detested it, and called for daylight, less indulgent to lovers, and therefore less distressing to her. After accepting her desertion patiently and calmly for five months, she was now rebelling and wringing her hands, as she reproached the night. Ignorance, the feeling of offended dignity, contempt, no longer protected her from the jealous fury which possessed her. They were together at this hour--side by side, and too late she knew the strength of that passion which had attracted them, the one to the other, and which she herself, by leaving him, had allowed to develop. This Anne de Sézery whom she had received in her home without heeding her ardent nature, whom she had never looked at except to find fault with her--of whom she never thought till then, except to attribute to her the basest of motives, she now pictured with her golden eyes, her face lighted up by emotion and the intellectual delight which emanated from her. She hated her--while she tried to be just to her. She was keenly alive to her suffering, as though she had just been deceived.

A cry which echoed from afar aroused her. It was one of those calls which the shepherds send from one hill to another: a prolonged and lingering note--followed by a sharp trill which seemed to mock her. It was repeated once, then again, growing more distant, less distinct. The silence added to it, accentuated its dual expression of mockery and despair. Was it the signal of a lover or the good-by of shepherd? Elizabeth, overwhelmed, listened for its repetition. The return to her thoughts tired her so, that she longed to find rest from the expression of her sorrow in any external manifestation, even in discordant music. But in the silence, she surrendered again to the loneliness of love. Had she ever felt that love before, or, so aroused, was she experiencing it for the first time? It dispelled triumphantly, with brutality and certainty, all the contempt she had felt in the past few weeks, since she had known of the secret wickedness going on about her in the name of love. She even forgave Philippe Lagier his impertinent confession, for the sake of the warning he had given her at Grenoble, which now came back to her memory like a realized prediction.

"To love, if one sincerely loves you," he had said--"if one spares you every difficulty, every effort, is not to one's credit. To love when you are deserted, betrayed, forgotten, when your heart is trampled upon,--that is love."

Why had she then rebelled against such just words? Albert had trampled on her heart all that night--had she ever loved him as she did at that hour when she was opening her eyes wide to the obscurity of life? The morning when he had first whispered in her ear the words that every young girl expects and which do not surprise her, the afternoon when her fiancé had shyly touched her cheek with his lips at St. Martin d'Uriage, the evening she became a wife without even understanding how to make of her suffering an offering of love, none of these experiences had brought her memories, comparable in depth of feeling to this distress which was crushing her. Did she have to lose her happiness to know its value?--And she had even lost it without understanding it. That her humiliation might be complete, she had to learn it from another love which was passed over her, like an infectious illness, devouring her with its fire.

The increasing coolness of those last hours of night did not calm her fever. The wind grew cooler, as it touched her face--She clung to the window sash with all her strength to support herself. So many and such overwhelming thoughts crushed her at the same time. Murmurs, then short stifled sobs from the children's room, made her start, listen, but she did not move from her place. Contrary to her habits, she did not go to the door, but let Marie Louise, whose voice she had distinguished, fight alone against her nightmare. She shut herself up savagely in her despair, and the last sentence of Albert's diary, so cruel in its selfishness, became intelligible to her. The little girl had gone to sleep again when she felt able to go to her.

"The cup ... of happiness" she thought in recalling the last words the child had said.

She had held it in her hands--the divine cup--She had received it as a treasure which was her due, and scarcely noticing it, she had quaffed it unconcernedly, and had then allowed it to be taken from her.

How had she been unable to suspect what life could hold for her? She no longer defended herself against Albert's accusations. To defend herself meant to increase the influence of the rival. She preferred to be the guilty one. Yes, in her home, one breathed the odor of death, and not the fascination of life. Instead of a warm light on entering, one met darkness--cold.

"Why," she beseeched in condemning her past, "why was I not warned? I was so young, so simple and ignorant. Would I not have molded myself? Young girls do not know. No one tells them that everyone has to make his own home and watch his fire. They collect stones by chance, and the first breath of wind disperses their ashes. It is wicked not to help them."

But her memory unhesitatingly gave her the answer. She remembered all the circumstances, particularly frequent in the first days of their marriage, when Albert had tried to shake off her apathy, to give to her a little vital energy. In traveling, at the fireside, in the wintertime, in Paris, on the terrace at Saint Martin, in the summer, he had tried to vivify the past, nature, art, books, the fleeting moment. How much time and effort he had used to try to interest her, to awaken her passion, to increase the value of her days! She thought of this with tenderness and understood it to be proofs of his love.

"He did love me. He loved me before he loved her--When he spoke to me enthusiastically, feelingly, about his favorite works or things of the past, it was love that he was holding out to me. To understand life one must love it--one must love. I see it now...."

She had built up that wall against which all force is useless: the power of unresponsiveness. Her resistance had been constant. To her understanding, to live meant to let live. Had she not filled daily her petty duties as mistress of the house, and her simple maternal duties as well? What more could she do? The bitterness her husband sometimes manifested, which he rapidly overcame, but which showed frequently on his face when he came home, had seemed unjust. Now she explained it to herself. The home lacked a living, happy soul to give meaning to the humblest cares; to the most trifling needs, diffusing that spirit of harmony, relaxation, peace, which allows the man of mental activity to follow the course of his thoughts, to gather them and afterwards give expression to them--not in muddled sentences, but with quiet authority, capable of soothing and comforting other people, and awakening them to a realization of the flight of time. So, by an exalted intuition, vague and pathetic--she began to understand the rôle that fate had assigned to her in which she had failed.

Her children had appreciated their father more than she had. When they welcomed him with their laughter, with their shouts of joy, and when they unceasingly asked him for new toys or stories, they were instinctively paying him homage. They attributed to him the power of doubling their happiness in life. And he himself met with only indolence or indifference, as if, in spite of his strength, he never had need of rest and relaxation. Year by year he felt himself more alone and unsatisfied. And other women, noticing that loneliness, waited upon him, and recognizing his superiority, tempted him. She had never guessed at this menace which hung over her. She had not anticipated Anne de Sézery. Without doubt she was the cause and origin of her own unhappiness.

She hastily withdrew from the window, seeing before her like an apparition, the most cruel passage of the diary, which entered so deeply into the heart of man,--that referring to the mystery, to the fatality of love,--that passage which dared to express the thought that even in happiness, one can never be quite sure of one's desires. She held out her arms to push it from her. No, no, it would have been a warning to her to be on her guard. Defenseless, she had been surprised in her sleep. But her defeat was irreparable. The other one had understood too well what she had neglected. Reaching this last stage of the mad course that her thoughts followed without direction, she gave way to her despair. Why had she not been so cruelly wounded when she discovered her husband's treachery? Sorrow was like love, an abyss whose depths can never be explored. The thought which took hold of her with all its force, which was like a death watch at the side of a departed relative, instantly transformed her knowledge, but not her courage. She saw clearly into the depths of her own soul, but she fathomed her weakness and gave way to it. Of what value to discover one's mistake so late when all was lost?

Night was stealing away like a wolf. Over the mountain tops the first lights of dawn were appearing, all golden on a sky of green, a sky of a color, so delicate, so pure. The stars were fading away, melting into the fresh air as snow in the heat. Suddenly Elizabeth felt the touch of the sun upon her face which was bathed in tears. Overcome by her sorrow, she shuddered and put her hands over her eyes, as if to protect them from this unwelcome contact. The light shone through her fingers. All about her the garden, woods, meadows, all nature, was awakening. The trees, which had been so indistinct, were outlined against the golden light which was rising and filling space. In the bushes the birds were welcoming the return of day with joyous song. It was life which was again coming into its own with a full sense of possession. She too was filled with a mad longing to live.

To live? She did not know how, she would try. She would struggle against her stupidity, her apathy, her ignorance. For herself? It was too late. For her children who should not be like her. But was it not difficult then to think of anyone's else happiness than her own? Timidly she went to her mirror, and beautified by the dawn as were the flowers, she saw herself, although pale and with reddened eyes, withal still so young, that hope entered into her heart like a sunbeam.

"I am young. She is not so young."

She tried to smile at herself but could not. The dawning day bathed her in all its beauty. Nevertheless, she trembled with cold.

"The day--Life--They do not revive me."

Turning from her mirror, she concentrated her mind, her poor tired mind, on a single idea--which became the axis of her actions, as a star that of the world.

"Now, yes, now, I know that I love him. And I hope for nothing from him but sorrow...."

And she understood vaguely that this exaltation of suffering signified a new life dawning for her.