THE MUTILATED HAND
The penalty of such loves is the silence to which they are condemned.
Even when the mouths are speaking, the noise of the words they exchange
does not break the heavy silence of the inner, solitary thoughts. Each
follows his, or her, course of thought without ever penetrating into
the very life of the other. A dispiriting intercourse from which Ralph,
always so ready to expand, suffered more and more.
Josephine too must have been suffering from it, to judge from certain
moments of extreme lassitude in which she seemed on the verge of those
confidences that draw lovers closer than do embraces. Once she began
to weep in Ralph’s arms so bitterly that he looked for an access of
surrender. But she recovered almost at once, and he felt her further
away from him than ever.
“She cannot trust,” he told himself. “She is one of those beings who
dwell apart from their fellows in a solitude that has no bounds. She
is a prisoner of the image she has formed of herself, has forced
herself to form of herself; indeed, a prisoner of the enigma she has
elaborated and which holds her in its invisible meshes. As the daughter
of Cagliostro she has acquired the habit of the darkness, of the
intricate, of plots, intrigues, and subterranean operations. To tell
anyone the story of one of these machinations is to give him the thread
which will guide him through the labyrinth. She is afraid and withdraws
into herself.”
By way of counter-stroke he kept silence himself and refrained from
making any allusion to the adventure on which they had embarked, or to
the problem of which they were seeking the solution. Had she obtained
possession of the casket? Did she know the key-word? Had she plunged
her hand into the hollow in that legendary block and emptied it of
those thousands and thousands of precious stones?
On that matter, on every matter, silence.
Moreover, after they had passed Rouen, their intimacy slackened.
Leonard, avoiding Ralph, reappeared again. The secret meetings began
once more. The carriage and the untiring little horses every day
carried Josine away. Whither? On what enterprises? Ralph observed that
three of the abbeys, Saint-Georges, Jumièges, and Saint Wandrille, were
close to the river. But then, if she were searching in this quarter, it
must be that no solution had yet been found, and that she had simply
failed.
This notion drove him abruptly to action. He sent to the inn near
La Haie d’Etigues for his bicycle, and rode across the country to
the outskirts of Lillebonne, in which Bridget Rousselin’s mother was
living. There he learned that a fortnight before--which was about the
time that Josine had taken the train from Paris--the Widow Rousselin
had shut her house and gone, so they said, to join her daughter in
Paris. The evening before a lady had come to see her.
It was ten o’clock at night before Ralph got back to the barge which
was moored to the southwest of the first curve beyond Rouen. A little
while before reaching it he passed Josine’s carriage, which the little
horses, utterly exhausted, could scarcely drag along. When it came to
the bank of the river Leonard jumped down from the box, opened the
door, bent down, stood up with the inert body of the fainting Josine in
his arms, and carried her to the barge. Ralph lent a hand, and the two
of them carried her down to her cabin. The woman of the barge came to
tend her.
“Look after her,” said Leonard roughly. “She has only fainted. But
you’re all to stay on board, and don’t you forget it!”
He went back to the carriage and drove off.
Josine was delirious most of the night, but Ralph could make no sense
of her incoherent utterances. Next morning she had nearly recovered.
Next evening Ralph went to the nearest village to buy a newspaper. He
read among the local news:
Yesterday afternoon, the police of Caudebec, on receiving information
that a wood-cutter had heard the screams of a woman appealing for
help from an old lime-kiln on the outskirts of Maulevrier Forest,
sent a sergeant and a constable to enquire into the matter. As these
two representatives of the law approached the clearing in which the
lime-kiln stands, they perceived over the fence two men who were
dragging a woman towards a closed carriage beside which another woman
was standing. Compelled to make the circuit of the fence, the police
only reached the scene of action after the departure of the carriage.
They at once started in pursuit of it, a pursuit which should have
ended in the success of the police. But the horses drawing the
carriage were so swift and the driver’s knowledge of the lanes and
byways so extensive, that he succeeded in throwing them off his track
in the network of roads to the north between Caudebec and Motteville.
Moreover the night was coming on; and they have not yet succeeded in
ascertaining in which direction this nice little gang escaped.
“And they will not succeed,” said Ralph to himself. “Nobody but me
can reconstitute the facts since nobody but me knows the points of
departure and arrival.”
He formulated the following conclusions:
“One fact is certain: Mother Rousselin was in that old lime-kiln in
charge of a confederate.
“Secondly, Josine and Leonard, who lured her away from Lillebonne and
shut her up, go to see her every day and try to extract some definite
information from her. Yesterday the questioning was doubtless rather
violent. Mother Rousselin yells; the police arrive. A desperate flight.
They get away. Somewhere on their route they deposit their captive in
another prison, already prepared for her; and once more they are safe.
All these emotions brought about Josine’s attack of nerves.”
He studied an ordnance map of the route from Maulevrier Forest to
the _Nonchalante_. The direct route was thirty kilometers; somewhere
off that route, at some distance to the left or to the right Madam
Rousselin was imprisoned.
“Come,” he said to himself, “the terrain of the conflict is marked out.
It’s about time that I made my entry on to the stage.”
Next day he got to work, wandering along the Normandy roads,
questioning the dwellers on them and trying to discover the points
of the passage and the halting-places of “an old barouche drawn by
two little horses.” Logically and inevitably his quest must come to a
successful end.
* * * * *
During those days the love of Ralph and Josephine Balsamo was at
its keenest and most passionate. The young woman, knowing that the
police were on her track, and remembering what she had heard at the
Vasseur Inn, at Doudeville, did not dare to leave the _Nonchalante_ and
traverse the Caux country. So after every expedition Ralph found her
on the barge, and they threw themselves into one another’s arms with
an exasperated desire to enjoy to the full the delights which, they
foresaw, must soon come to an end.
Only such dolorous delights as two lovers on the verge of separation
can have. Suspect delights that doubt poisoned. Either of them divined
the secret designs of the other, and even as their lips met either
knew that the other, for all their love, was acting as if they were at
daggers drawn.
“I love you! I love you!” Ralph reiterated desperately while his inmost
thought was how to find means of snatching Bridget’s mother from the
talons of his mistress.
Sometimes they gripped one another with the violence of two creatures
veritably battling with one another. There was a brutality in their
caresses, a threat in their eyes, hate in their hearts, and despair
in their tenderness. One would have said that they were watching
one another to discover the weak point at which to strike with the
deadliest effect.
One night Ralph awoke with a sensation of extreme discomfort to find
Josephine at his bedside, with a lamp in her hand, looking down on
him. He shivered. Not that her charming face wore other than its usual
smiling expression. But why did that smile seem to him so wicked and so
cruel?
“What’s the matter? What do you want?” he said sharply.
“Nothing--nothing,” she said in careless accents, and she left him.
But she came back presently to show him a photograph.
“I found this in your pocket-book,” she said. “I could hardly believe
that you carried about with you another woman’s photograph. Who is it?”
It was the photograph of Clarice d’Etigues. He hesitated, then said: “I
don’t know. It’s a photo I picked up.”
“Come: don’t lie!” she said brusquely. “It’s Clarice d’Etigues. Do you
suppose I’ve never seen her? You were in love with her.”
“No! Never!” he said firmly.
“You _were_ in love with her, and she with you. I’m certain of it. And
it is still going on.”
He shrugged his shoulders, but as he was about to defend the young
girl, Josephine broke in:
“I don’t want to hear anything more about it. You’re warned, and it’s
just as well. I’m not going out of my way to look for her, but if she
ever crosses my path--all the worse for her.”
“And all the worse for you, if you touch a hair of her head!” he
exclaimed imprudently.
She paled. Her lips quivered, and laying her hand on his neck, she
stammered: “You dare to take her part against me ... against me!”
Her hand, very cold, contracted. He had the impression that she was
going to strangle him and sprang out of bed. In her turn she was
alarmed, thinking that he was going to strike her, and snatched from
her bodice a little dagger with gleaming blade.
In these attitudes of attack they stared into one another’s eyes, and
it was so painful that Ralph murmured:
“Oh, Josine, what a pity it is that it should have come to this!”
No less moved, she sank into a chair, and he threw himself at her feet.
“Kiss me, Ralph--kiss me--and don’t let’s think anything more about
it!” she murmured in a broken voice.
They clasped one another in a feverish embrace. But he observed that
she still held the poniard, and a very slight movement would have
driven it into his neck.
At eight o’clock the next morning he left the _Nonchalante_.
“I have nothing to hope from her,” he told himself. “As for love: she
loves me indeed, and sincerely; and she wishes, as I do, that this love
was without reserves. But it cannot be. She has a hostile soul. She
distrusts everything and everybody, and me above all.”
At bottom he found her impenetrable. In spite of all his suspicions
and, for that matter, of considerable evidence, even though the very
spirit of evil dwelt in her, he refused to admit that she would go to
the length of actual crime. He could not reconcile the idea of murder
with that sweet face, which neither hate nor anger rendered less sweet.
No: Josephine’s hands were not stained with blood. But he thought of
Leonard and never doubted that he was capable of putting Bridget’s
mother to the most terrible torture.
* * * * *
The short road from Rouen to Duclair, a little before the latter place,
runs between the meadows on the bank of the Seine to the cliff which
hangs over the stream. Caves have been hollowed in the actual chalk
and serve the peasants as tool-houses and sometimes as lodgings for
themselves. It came about that Ralph at last noticed that one of these
caves was occupied by three men who were weaving baskets from the
osiers of the neighboring stream. A small hedgeless vegetable garden
lay in front of it.
A careful study of their habits and some suspicious details led him to
suppose that father Corbu and his two sons, poachers and petty thieves
with an uncommonly bad reputation, were affiliated with that band the
members of which Josephine always had ready to her hand, and also to
suppose that this cave of theirs was one of those refuges--inns, sheds,
lime-kilns, and so forth, which Josephine had established all about the
country.
He had to change his surmise into a certainty without attracting
anyone’s attention. He tried therefore to turn the enemy’s position,
and climbing on to the cliff, took his way from the river by a woodland
path which dipped into a slight depression. At the bottom of the
depression he crawled through the bushes and briars to a spot five or
six feet above the cave.
He had brought food and drink with him and there he spent two days and
two nights. Concealed by the bushes and the thick grass under them, he
took an unobtrusive part in the life of the three men. On the second
day a conversation he overheard proved uncommonly enlightening: the
Corbu family had been in charge of Madam Rousselin and since the flight
from Maulevrier Forest were actually keeping her at the end of their
cave.
How was he to set her free? Or how, at any rate, was he to get near her
and obtain from the unfortunate woman the information which she had
doubtless refused Josephine? Carefully considering the habits of the
Corbus, he formed and rejected several plans. But on the morning of the
third day he saw the _Nonchalante_ descend the river and come to her
moorings at the foot of the cliff, about three-quarters of a mile from
the cave.
At five o’clock in the evening two people came across the gangway and
along the river bank. In spite of her peasant’s dress, he recognized
Josephine by her walk. Leonard was her companion.
They stopped in front of the Corbus’ cave and conversed with them as
with persons on whom they had chanced by accident. Then, since there
was no one on the road, they went sharply into the garden. Leonard
disappeared into the interior of the cave. Josephine remained outside,
sitting on an old and rickety chair, under the cover of a screen of
shrubs.
Old Corbus hoed away at his garden. His sons went on with their
basket-work.
“The questioning is going to begin again,” murmured Ralph. “What a pity
it is I cannot be present at it!”
He watched Josephine, whose face was almost entirely hidden under the
drooping brim of a large, common straw hat, of the kind that peasants
wear during the hot weather. She never stirred; she was leaning forward
a little with her elbows on her knees.
The minutes slipped by and Ralph began to ask himself what he was doing
there, when all at once he fancied he heard a groan close by, which was
followed by smothered cries. Yes, they certainly came from close beside
him. The sounds rose, indeed, from the middle of the thick grass which
surrounded him. How was it possible?
He crawled to the point at which the noise seemed loudest, and it took
him a very little time to understand what was happening. The edge of
the cliff, in which the hollow ended, was covered with stones, and
among these stones was a little heap of bricks hardly noticeable among
the bushes and roots. It was the ruins of a chimney.
That explained the phenomenon which had surprised him. The cave of the
Corbus must come to an end a long way in the rock; and there must be
a passage running down to it which had formerly served as a chimney.
Through this passage and the heap of bricks the sounds came.
There came two louder cries of agony. Ralph thought of Josephine. By
turning round he could still see her at the end of the little garden.
Still sitting, bent forward, her body motionless, she was carelessly
pulling the petals off a capucine. Ralph supposed, or rather tried to
suppose, that she had not heard those cries. Perhaps even she knew
nothing about what was going on. In spite of that he trembled with
indignation. Whether or no she actually had a part in the terrible
questioning that the unfortunate woman was undergoing, was she any
the less to blame? And all the obstinate doubts in his mind, by which
she had profited up to then, ought they not to vanish in the face of
the implacable reality? Everything that he had felt to her prejudice,
everything that he had refused to know was true, since she must have
definitely set Leonard to the task with which he was busy and of which
she had been unable to endure the horrible spectacle.
Carefully but quickly Ralph pulled aside the bricks and scooped away
the heap of earth. When he had finished the cries had ceased, but
the sound of words came to his ears hardly louder than a whisper. He
had, therefore, to continue his work and clear the upper part of the
passage. Then, lying with his head well down in it, he could hear
distinctly. Two voices were speaking in turn--the voice of Leonard
and a woman’s voice, without doubt the voice of Madam Rousselin. The
unfortunate woman seemed to be at the end of her strength and a prey to
indescribable terror.
“Yes ... yes,” she murmured, “I’m going to tell you, since I said I
would. But I’m so worn out you must excuse me, good gentleman....
Besides.... All these things happened such a long time ago....
Twenty-two years have passed since....”
“Stop babbling and come to the point!” growled Leonard.
“Yes,” she replied. “I am coming to the point. It was at the time of
the war with Prussia, twenty-two years ago.... And as the Prussians
were advancing on Rouen, where we were living, two gentlemen came to
my poor husband, who was a carrier ... gentlemen whom we had never
seen before. They wished to get out of the country, with their trunks,
like a great many other people at that time, you know. My husband
accepted their offer and without wasting any more time, for they were
in a hurry, set out with them in his carrier’s cart. Unfortunately,
owing to the fact that our other horses had been requisitioned, we
had only one horse, and that one wasn’t up to much. Besides, it was
snowing.... Seven miles out of Rouen he fell down and could not get up
again.... The gentlemen were shivering with fear, for the Prussians
might turn up at any moment.... It was then that a man from Rouen, who
my husband knew quite well, a confidential servant of the Cardinal de
Bonnechose--Monsieur Jaubert his name was--drove up in a dog-cart....
You can see what happened.... They talked.... The two gentlemen offered
him a large sum for his horse.... Jaubert refused. They begged him,
and then they threatened him.... And then they threw themselves on him
like madmen, and in spite of the prayers of my husband, knocked him
on the head.... After that they looked into his dog-cart, found in it
a casket, which they took, harnessed Jaubert’s horse to the carrier’s
cart, and went off leaving the poor man half dead.”
“Quite dead,” said Leonard more accurately.
“Yes: my husband learned that months later, when he was able to enter
Rouen again.”
“And didn’t he inform the police about it?”
Madam Rousselin appeared to hesitate; then she said: “Yes.... No doubt
he ought to have done so ... perhaps.... Only----”
“Only they’d bought his silence, hadn’t they?” sneered Leonard. “They
opened the casket in front of him and found jewels in it and gave your
husband his share of the loot.”
“Yes--yes ... the rings ... the seven rings,” she said. “But that
wasn’t his reason for keeping silence.... The poor man was ill. He died
a little while after he came back from Rouen.”
“And that casket?”
“It was left in the empty cart so that my husband brought it back with
the rings. I kept silence, as he had done. It was already an old story,
and I was afraid of the scandal, too.... They might have accused my
husband. It was just as well to keep my mouth shut. I went away to
Lillebonne with my daughter, and it was only when Bridget left me to
go on the stage that she took the rings ... which for my part I never
wanted to touch.... That’s the whole story, Monsieur. Don’t ask me
anything else.”
“What do you mean, the whole story?” said Leonard, and he sneered again.
“It’s all I know,” said the widow fearfully.
“But I’ve no interest in that precious story of yours. What we’re
quarreling about is another thing.... As you very well know.”
“What do you mean?”
“The letters carved on the inside of the casket, on the lid--that’s the
whole point of the business.”
“Those half rubbed-out letters! I swear to you, good gentleman, I never
even dreamed of trying to make them out.”
“That’s all right, and I’m quite willing to believe it,” said Leonard.
“But then we come again to the original point: what has become of the
casket?”
“I’ve told you. It was taken from me--the evening before you came to
Lillebonne with the lady, the lady who wore a thick veil.”
“It was taken from you, was it? Who by?”
“By a person of my acquaintance.”
“A person who was looking for it?” said Leonard sharply.
“No. That person saw it on the top of a cupboard in my sitting-room and
fancied it as a curio,” said the widow.
“What was that person’s name--for the hundredth time--what was that
person’s name? That’s what I want to know,” stormed Leonard.
“I can’t tell you that. It was someone who has been very kind to me,
and to tell would only do harm--great harm. I will not tell.”
“But, you old fool, that person would be the first to tell you to
speak!”
“Perhaps--perhaps. But how am I to know that? I cannot write.... We see
one another from time to time.... Why, we were to meet next Tuesday, at
two o’clock.”
“Where?”
“It’s impossible.... I’d no right----”
“What? Have we got to begin all over again?” growled Leonard
impatiently.
The widow cried in a voice of terror: “No, no! good gentleman! I beg
you!”
The words ended in a cry of pain.
“Oh, the brute!... What is he doing to me?... Oh! my poor hand!”
“Speak, then, curse you!”
“Yes, yes.... I will!... I will!”
But she broke off short; her voice gave out. She was at the end of
her strength. Leonard, however, went on pressing her and Ralph caught
some words painfully uttered: “Yes ... we’re to meet on Tuesday ... at
the old lighthouse.... But, no!... I have no right!... I would rather
die!... You can do what you like!... I’d rather die!”
She was silent.
Leonard growled: “What’s the matter with the pig-headed old beast now?
She’s not dead I hope. Oh, you old donkey, you shall speak! I’ll give
you ten minutes and then I’ll make an end of it.”
A door was opened and then shut. Doubtless he was going to inform
Josephine of the admissions he had so far obtained and to get
instructions from her as to the course the rest of the questioning was
to take. Ralph pulled his head out of the chimney and saw him go to
her and stand over her. He talked to her with excited gestures; she
listened to him.
“The brutes!” Ralph execrated both of them, the one no less than the
other. The groans of Madam Rousselin had moved him profoundly and he
was trembling with rage and burning to act. Nothing in the world should
prevent him from rescuing this woman.
As was his custom, he started to act the moment that the vision of the
things that he must accomplish unfolded itself before him in logical
sequence. In these cases hesitation is apt to spoil everything. Success
depends on the audacity with which one forces one’s way through
obstacles that as yet one does not even know. He glanced at his
adversaries. All five of them were some distance from the cave. Quickly
he went down the chimney, this time feet foremost. It was his intention
to make his way down the crumbling shaft as gently as possible. But
almost on the instant he went down at full speed accompanied by most of
its crumbling walls and arrived at the bottom with a bump and the crash
of falling stones and bricks.
“Hang it all! If only they didn’t hear it outside!” he said to himself.
He listened. No one was coming. The darkness was so great that he
believed himself to be still on the hearth. But stretching out his arms
he found that the chimney had landed him in a little chamber hollowed
out of the end of the cave and so small that his hand immediately
touched another hand which almost seemed to be on fire. His eyes grew
used to the darkness; and he saw gleaming eyes fixed on him in a gray
and haggard face contorted with terror. She was not bound or gagged.
What use would it have been? Her weakness and terror rendered escape
impossible.
He bent down and said to her: “Don’t be frightened, I saved the life
of your daughter, Bridget, who was also a victim of these people who
are persecuting you on account of the casket and the rings. I’ve been
on their track ever since they took you from Lillebonne. I’m going to
save you too, but on condition that you never say a word about what has
happened to anyone.”
But what was the use of explanations that the unfortunate woman was
incapable of understanding? Without wasting any more time, he picked
her up and hoisted her on to his shoulder. Then he walked to the mouth
of the cave and quietly opened the door which was not locked as he
expected.
A little way off Leonard and Josephine were still talking, behind them,
at the bottom of the garden the white road stretched away to the large
village of Duclair; and on it were the carts of the countryfolk, coming
and going.
Then, at what he judged to be a propitious moment, he threw the door
open, walked quickly down the garden path and laid Madam Rousselin on
the turf at the bottom of it.
At once, all about him there rose an outcry. The Corbus rushed forward
along with Leonard, all four of them, spurred to a conflict by an
unreasoning impulse. But what could they do? A carriage was coming
along the road from the right, another from the left. To attack Ralph
in the presence of all these witnesses and recover the unfortunate
woman by force was to betray themselves and bring upon themselves the
inevitable enquiry and the penalty of the law. They stopped short,
exactly as Ralph had foreseen.
In the calmest manner in the world he called to two nuns, wearing large
caps, one of whom was driving a little wagonette drawn by an old horse,
and asked them to succor a poor woman whom he had found unconscious by
the side of the road, her fingers crushed by some carriage.
The good sisters who were in charge of a refuge and small infirmary at
Duclair were only too ready to do so. They installed Madam Rousselin
in the wagonette and covered her with shawls. She had not recovered
consciousness and was delirious, waving her mutilated hand, the thumb
and first finger of which were swollen and bleeding.
The horse trotted quietly off.
* * * * *
Ralph remained motionless, thoroughly upset by the sight of that
mutilated hand; and so upset was he that he did not notice the
movements of Leonard and the three Corbus who had surrounded him and
were about to attack him. When he did perceive them, the four of them
had cut him off from the road and were trying to force him into the
garden. No peasant was in sight; and the situation seemed so favorable
to Leonard that he drew his knife.
“Put that up and leave us!” cried Josephine. “You Corbus too. None of
that foolishness!”
She had not risen from her chair while all this had been going on, but
now she rose among the bushes.
Leonard protested: “It isn’t foolishness! The foolishness would be to
let him go--now that we’ve once got him.”
“Be off!” she commanded.
“But that woman--that woman will denounce us!”
“No she won’t. It’s not to Mother Rousselin’s interest to speak. Now be
off!” said Josephine.
Leonard and his friends moved away. She came close up to Ralph.
He looked at her at length, with a look which appeared to disquiet her
to the point that to break the silence she had to say jestingly: “Each
in turn, isn’t it, Ralph? Between you and me success passes from one
to the other. To-day you have the upper hand. To-morrow--but what’s
the matter with you? You do look funny! And your eyes are positively
savage.”
He said curtly: “Good-by, Josine.”
The color in her cheeks faded a little and she said: “Good-by? You mean
_au revoir_.”
“No: good-by.”
“Then--then--you mean that you don’t wish to see me again?”
“I don’t wish to see you again,” he said coldly.
She lowered her eyes. Her eyelids quivered. Her lips were smiling and
at the same time infinitely dolorous.
“Why, Ralph?” she murmured.
“Because I’ve seen a thing that I cannot--that I can never forgive
you,” he said.
“What?”
“That poor woman’s hand.”
She looked as if she were going to faint and murmured, “Ah, I
understand.... Leonard hurt her.... But I forbade him to do anything of
the kind.... I thought she had yielded merely to threats.”
“You lie, Josine! You heard the woman’s cries, just as you heard
them in Maulevrier Forest. Leonard acts, but the will to evil,
the intention to murder is yours, Josine. It was you who sent your
accomplice to the little house in Montmartre with instructions to kill
Bridget Rousselin if she resisted. It was you who some time ago put the
poisonous cachet among those which Beaumagnan would swallow. It was you
who, during the years before that, destroyed Beaumagnan’s two friends,
Denis Saint-Hébert and George d’Isneauval.”
“No, no! I won’t let you say so!” she broke out. “It isn’t true! And
you know it isn’t!”
He shrugged his shoulders and said slowly: “Yes: the legend of the
other woman created to meet the necessity of the case ... another woman
who is your exact image and commits the crimes, while you, Josephine
Balsamo, content yourself with less brutal adventures. I believe in
that legend. I let myself get muddled up in all these stories of
identical women, daughter, grand-daughter, and great grand-daughter of
Cagliostro. But it’s all over, Josine. If my eyes deliberately closed
themselves formerly in order not to see things, the sight of that
mangled hand has definitely opened them to the truth.”
“You are acting on lies, Ralph! On wrong interpretations! I never knew
the two men of whom you speak!”
He said wearily: “It may be so. It is not altogether impossible that
I am making a mistake. But it is altogether impossible that I should
henceforward see you through this fog of mystery in which you’ve hidden
yourself. You are no longer mysterious to me, Josine. I see you as you
are--that is to say as a criminal.”
He paused and added in a lower voice: “As a sick woman even. If there
is a lie anywhere, it’s the lie of your beauty.”
She was silent. In the shadow of her straw hat her face was still
sweet. The accusations of her lover did not ruffle her. She was
altogether seductive, altogether enchanting.
He was disturbed to the very depths of his being. Never had she
appeared to him so beautiful and so desirable; and he asked himself if
it were not folly to seize a freedom which he would curse on the morrow.
“My beauty is not a lie, Ralph,” she declared. “And you will come back
to me because it is for you that I am beautiful.”
“I shall never come back.”
“Yes, you can no longer live without me. The _Nonchalante_ is close by,
I shall be waiting for you to-morrow.”
“I shall never come back,” said he, once more ready to bend the knee.
“In that case, why are you trembling? Why are you so pale?” she said
stretching out her arms toward him.
He perceived that his salvation depended on his silence, that he must
flee without answering, and never turn his head.
He thrust off the two hands which were grasping him, and went.