In those last autumn days, under the rain of dead leaves, they enjoyed
delicious hours. Leonor lived attentively, taking care that no
single word of his might shock the young girl. Rose, her eyes always
sad, answered with cordial politeness. Their words were measured,
insignificant, but they were uttered in a voice full of a secret
emotion.
They directed the alterations together, giving no orders without
consulting one another; and they were soon agreed about everything, for
their only desire was to stand together looking at the workmen. They
confined themselves to cutting a few useful paths, transplanting a few
bushes and arranging the lawns and flower-beds.
The decisive gestures in life are almost always the simplest, the most
ingenuous. Discovering a few sprigs of violet under a wall, picking
them, offering them to her: that was the act which won for Leonor his
first smile from the girl, a smile that was still vague, a smile in
which the soul, so long solicited, showed itself for an instant, as
though at a window visited at last by the sun.
One day, while they were holding a lilac that was being transplanted,
their hands met. Rose withdrew hers without affectation, but a little
later she approached it once more and perhaps that tree, as it was
wrenched from the earth, felt a thrill of love passing through its
sleeping trunk.
Leonor thought of nothing but the charm of his present life; he
analysed himself no more; he made no plots or projects; he breathed
pure air, he was opening out.
Though less wretched, Rose still suffered. One evening, when she was
undressing to go to bed, she called to mind all the liberties she had
permitted. No detail was spared her, and it was in vain that her body
revolted; along her nerves she felt the now shameful shudder of her
former voluptuousness. She threw herself into her bed and soon, in the
warmth, the imaginary contacts grew more numerous and precise. Then,
losing her head, she yielded and went to sleep in a trance of pleasure.
Accordingly, in the mornings, she was apt to be a little peevish.
Leonor seemed, at these moments, to lose all he had gained in the
afternoons; but he was not disturbed by it. He knew that characters
change according to the time of day, as they change according to the
season. Happy in being able to hope for everything, he waited without
impatience. Exorcising Rose demanded a whole morning of Leonor's
company. The sound of his voice, rather than his words, calmed her
possessed spirit. She would end by doubting the very existence of the
spell from which she had been released and, by the time lunch was over,
she was a child smiling at love.
Some evenings the crisis was very intense. Hardly had she entered her
room when she seemed to receive a kind of imperious injunction to look
at herself in the glass. Standing there, she would press her shoulders
feverishly. Then she felt herself lifted up and carried to her bed, at
the mercy of the demon of love. At other times the obsession was less
malignant and she was able to attempt some resistance. The fall was
slow, gradual and sometimes incomplete. She noticed that she had more
peace and more strength on the evenings when she had, by her attitude,
encouraged Leonor to make some tenderer utterance, and that fact caused
her great joy. For she loved her exorcist; like a sick woman full of
confidence, she loved her doctor.
Now she appeared more humble and at the same time almost provocative.
She allowed her eyes to rest more often and for a longer time on the
young man's face. She even came to studying his face when he was
looking, and, though she dropped her eyes quickly at the first alarm,
Leonor noticed it.
"She loves me, she loves me. Ah! this time she will listen to me, and
perhaps she will speak."
But, by dint of loving innocently, Leonor had become shy; and several
days passed in the motions of the eyes and heart. Rose derived great
consolation from them. One evening, when the obsession had almost left
her in peace and she was about to go to sleep victorious, she suddenly
saw herself once more in the drawing room. Leonor was offering her a
marvellous flower of a kind she did not recognise. She took it and when
she smelt it felt an inexpressible sweetness slowly penetrate her whole
being; she was asleep.
She awoke full of joy, a thing that had not happened since the day
of her great grief. She was smiling at Leonor before she had even
seen him. They met on the stairs. Leonor heard a door slam, the sound
of hurrying feet. He drew back to make passage room. It was Rose.
Playfully, as she had already allowed him to do, he made as though to
bar her way.
"You shan't pass," he said.
"Very well, I won't pass."
And she fell into the open arms that closed at once round her body--a
happy prisoner.
"Do you love me, then? At last?"
"Yes, I love you."
Rose never once remembered that it was thus she had fallen into M.
Hervart's arms in the staircase of the tower. She forgot in its
entirety the first adventure of her poor abused heart and her troubled
senses. When M. Hervart's name was pronounced in her presence, it
recalled to her those studious walks at Robinvast with that old friend
of her father's who told her the anecdotes of entomology.
M. Des Boys, as he had resolved, revealed to his daughter what he
called the misfortunes of M. Hervart. And so, when she heard that
he was to marry Mme. Suif, she allowed herself an honest smile of
commiseration. That happened in the third year of their marriage; they
were spending the season at Grandcamp, where, without knowing her, she
often rubbed shoulders with a young woman who had played a decisive
part in her history.
Leonor was wandering one morning on this same beach where Gratienne had
attracted him; but he was not thinking of Gratienne, who as it happened
was looking at him, from a distance, with interest. He was thinking of
Hortense, of whose death he had seen the announcement in a local paper;
of Hortense, who had written him, on the eve of his marriage, a letter
so moving in its proud resignation that it had almost made him weep;
of Hortense whom he had loved and who perhaps had died because of his
happiness.
When he came back, Rose received him as a lover is received. She had
found in marriage the attentions which her nature demanded. She was
happy.
THE END