In the eighth year, Madeleine Conti retired from the stage and announced
her marriage. After five years of complete happiness she was taken
suddenly ill, as the result of exposure to a drenching storm. One
afternoon, as he waited by her bedside, talking in broken tones of all
that they had been to each other, he said to her in a voice that he
tried nervously to school to quietness:
"Madeleine, you know that our life together has been without the
slightest shadow from the first. You know we have proved to each other
how immense our love has been. In all these years I have grown in
maturity and understanding. I regret only one thing, and I have
regretted it bitterly, every day--that I once asked you, if--if ever for
a moment another man came into your life to hide it from me, to tell me
a lie. It was a great mistake. I have never ceased to regret it. Our
love has been so above all worldly things that there ought not to be the
slightest concealment between us. I release you from that promise. Tell
me now the truth. It will mean nothing to me. During the eight years
when we were separated there were--there must have been times, times of
loneliness, of weakness, when other men came into your life. Weren't
there?"
She turned and looked at him steadily, her large eyes seeming larger and
more brilliant from the heightened fever of her cheeks. Then she made a
little negative sign of her head, still looking at him.
"No, never."
"You don't understand, Madeleine," he said, dissatisfied, "or you are
still thinking of what I said to you there in Etretat. That was thirteen
years ago. Then I had just begun to love you, I feared for the future,
for everything. Now I have tested you, and I have never had a doubt. I
know the difference between the flesh and the spirit. I know your two
selves; I know how impossible it would have been otherwise. Now you can
tell me."
"There is nothing--to tell," she said slowly.
"I expected that you would have other men who loved you about you," he
said, feverishly. "I knew it would be so. I swear to you I expected it.
I know why you continue to deny it. It's for my sake, isn't it? I love
you for it. But, believe me, in such a moment there ought nothing to
stand between us. Madeleine, Madeleine, I beg you, tell me the truth."
She continued to gaze at him fixedly, without turning away her great
eyes, as forgetting himself, he rushed on:
"Yes, let me know the truth--that will be nothing now. Besides, I have
guessed it. Only I must know one way or the other. All these years I
have lived in doubt. You see what it means to me. You must understand
what is due me after all our life together. Madeleine, did you lie to
me?"
"No."
"Listen," he said, desperately. "You never asked me the same
question--why, I never understood--but if you had questioned me I could
not have answered truthfully what you did. There, you see, there is no
longer the slightest reason why you should not speak the truth."
She half closed her eyes--wearily.
"I have told--the truth."
"Ah, I can't believe it," he cried, carried away. "Oh, cursed day when I
told you what I did. It's that which tortures me. You adore me--you
don't wish to hurt me, to leave a wound behind, but I swear to you if
you told me the truth I should feel a great weight taken from my heart,
a weight that has been here all these years. I should know that every
corner of your soul had been shown to me, nothing withheld. I should
know absolutely, Madeleine, believe me, when I tell you this, when I
tell you I must know. Every day of my life I have paid the penalty, I
have suffered the doubts of the damned, I have never known an hour's
peace! I beg you, I implore you, only let me know the truth; the
truth--I must know the truth!"
He stopped suddenly, trembling all over, and held out his hands to her,
his face lashed with suffering.
"I have not lied," she said slowly, after a long study. She raised her
eyes, feebly made the sign of the cross, and whispered, "I swear it."
Then he no longer held in his tears. He dropped his head, and his body
shook with sobs, while from time to time he repeated, "Thank God, thank
God."