On the Brink
The days that followed were charming for Christiane Andermatt. She
lived, light-hearted, her soul full of joy. The morning bath was her
first pleasure, a delicious pleasure that made the skin tingle, an
exquisite half hour in the warm, flowing water, which disposed her to
feel happy all day long. She was, indeed, happy in all her thoughts
and in all her desires. The affection with which she felt herself
surrounded and penetrated, the intoxication of youthful life throbbing
in her veins, and then again this new environment, this superb country,
made for daydreams and repose, wide and odorous, enveloping her like
a great caress of nature, awakened in her fresh emotions. Everything
that approached, everything that touched her, continued this sensation
of the morning, this sensation of a tepid bath, of a great bath of
happiness wherein she plunged herself body and soul.
Andermatt, who had to leave Enval for a fortnight or perhaps a month,
had gone back to Paris, having previously reminded his wife to take
good care that the paralytic should not discontinue his course of
treatment. So each day, before breakfast, Christiane, her father, her
brother, and Paul, went to look at what Gontran called "the poor man's
soup." Other bathers came there also, and they formed a circular group
around the hole, while chatting with the vagabond.
He was not better able to walk, he declared, but he had a feeling as if
his legs were covered with ants; and he told how these ants ran up and
down, climbing as far as his thighs, and then going back again to the
tips of his toes. And even at night he felt these insects tickling and
biting him, so that he was deprived of sleep.
All the visitors and the peasants, divided into two camps, that of the
believers and that of the sceptics, were interested in this cure.
After breakfast, Christiane often went to look for the Oriol girls, so
that they might take a walk with her. They were the only members of her
own sex at the station to whom she could talk or with whom she could
have friendly relations, sharing a little of her confidence and asking
in return for some feminine sympathy. She had at once taken a liking
for the grave common sense allied with amiability which the elder girl
exhibited and still more for the spirit of sly humor possessed by
the younger; and it was less to please her husband than for her own
amusement that she now sought the friendship of the two sisters.
They used to set forth on excursions sometimes in a landau, an old
traveling landau with six seats, got from a livery-man at Riom, and at
other times on foot. They were especially fond of a little wild valley
near Chatel-Guyon, leading toward the hermitage of Sans-Souci. Along
the narrow road, which they slowly traversed, under the pine-trees,
on the bank of the little river, they would saunter in pairs, each
pair chatting together. At every stage along their track, where it
was necessary to cross the stream, Paul and Gontran, standing on
stepping-stones in the water, seized the women each with one arm, and
carried them over with a jump, so as to deposit them at the opposite
side. And each of these fordings changed the order of the pedestrians.
Christiane went from one to another, but found the opportunity of
remaining a little while alone with Paul Bretigny either in front or in
the rear.
He had no longer the same ways while in her company as in the first
days of their acquaintanceship; he was less disposed to laugh, less
abrupt in manner, less like a comrade, but more respectful and
attentive. Their conversations, however, assumed a tone of intimacy,
and the things that concerned the heart held in them the foremost
place. He talked to her about sentiment and love, like a man well
versed in such subjects, who had sounded the depths of women's
tenderness, and who owed to them as much happiness as suffering.
She, ravished and rather touched, urged him on to confidences with an
ardent and artful curiosity. All that she knew of him awakened in her
a keen desire to learn more, to penetrate in thought into one of those
male existences of which she had got glimpses out of books, one of
those existences full of tempests and mysteries of love. Yielding to
her importunities, he told her each day a little more about his life,
his adventures, and his griefs, with a warmth of language which his
burning memories sometimes rendered impassioned, and which the desire
to please made also seductive. He opened to her gaze a world till now
unknown to her, found eloquent words to express the subtleties of
desire and expectation, the ravages of growing hopes, the religion of
flowers and bits of ribbons, all the little objects treasured up as
sacred, the enervating effect of sudden doubts, the anguish of alarming
conjectures, the tortures of jealousy, and the inexpressible frenzy of
the first kiss.
And he knew how to describe all these things in a very seemly fashion,
veiled, poetic, and captivating. Like all men who are perpetually
haunted by desire and thoughts about woman he spoke discreetly of those
whom he had loved with a fever that throbbed within him still. He
recalled a thousand romantic incidents calculated to move the heart, a
thousand delicate circumstances calculated to make tears gather in the
eyes, and all those sweet futilities of gallantry which render amorous
relationships between persons of refined souls and cultivated minds the
most beautiful and most entrancing experiences that can be conceived.
All these disturbing and familiar chats, renewed each day and each
day more prolonged, fell on Christiane's soul like grains cast into
the earth. And the charm of this country spread wide around her, the
odorous air, that blue Limagne, so vast that it seemed to make the
spirit expand, those extinguished volcanoes on the mountain, furnaces
of the antique world serving now only to warm springs for invalids,
the cool shades, the rippling music of the streams as they rushed
over the stones--all this, too, penetrated the heart and the flesh of
the young woman, penetrated them and softened them like a soft shower
of warm rain on soil that is yet virgin, a rain that will cause to
bourgeon and blossom in it the flowers of which it had received the
seed.
She was quite conscious that this youth was paying court to her
a little, that he thought her pretty, even more than pretty; and
the desire to please him spontaneously suggested to her a thousand
inventions, at the same time designing and simple, to fascinate him and
to make a conquest of him.
When he looked moved, she would abruptly leave him; when she
anticipated some tender allusion on his lips, she would cast toward
him, ere the words were finished, one of those swift, unfathomable
glances which pierce men's hearts like fire. She would greet him with
soft utterances, gentle movements of her head, dreamy gestures with her
hands, or sad looks quickly changed into smiles, as if to show him,
even when no words had been exchanged between them, that his efforts
had not been in vain.
What did she desire? Nothing. What did she expect from all this?
Nothing.
She amused herself with this solely because she was a woman, because
she did not perceive the danger of it, because, without foreseeing
anything, she wished to find out what he would do.
And then she had suddenly developed that native coquetry which lies
hidden in the veins of all feminine beings. The slumbering, innocent
child of yesterday had unexpectedly waked up, subtle and keen-witted,
when facing this man who talked to her unceasingly about love. She
divined the agitation that swept across his mind when he was by her
side, she saw the increasing emotion that his face expressed, and she
understood all the different intonations of his voice with that special
intuition possessed by women who feel themselves solicited to love.
Other men had ere now paid attentions to her in the fashionable world
without getting anything from her in return save the mockery of a
playful young woman. Their commonplace flatteries diverted her; their
looks of melancholy love filled her with merriment; and to all their
manifestations of passion she responded only with derisive laughter.
In the case of this man, however, she felt herself suddenly confronted
with a seductive and dangerous adversary; and she had been changed into
one of those clever creatures, instinctively clear-sighted, armed with
audacity and coolness, who, so long as their hearts remain untrammeled,
watch for, surprise, and draw men into the invisible net of sentiment.
As for him, he had, at first, thought her rather silly. Accustomed to
women versed in intrigues, exercised in love just as an old soldier
is in military maneuvers, skilled in all the wiles of gallantry and
tenderness, he considered this simple heart commonplace, and treated it
with a light disdain.
But, little by little, her ingenuousness had amused him, and then
fascinated him; and yielding to his impressionable nature, he had begun
to make her the object of his affectionate attentions. He knew full
well that the best way to excite a pure soul was to talk incessantly
about love, while exhibiting the appearance of thinking about others;
and accordingly, humoring in a crafty fashion the dainty curiosity
which he had aroused in her, he proceeded, under the pretense of
confiding his secrets to her, to teach her what passion really meant,
under the shadow of the wood.
He, too, found this play amusing, showed her, by all the little
gallantries that men know how to display, the growing pleasure that
he found in her society, and assumed the attitude of a lover without
suspecting that he would become one in reality. And all this came about
as naturally in the course of their protracted walks as it does to take
a bath on a warm day, when you find yourself at the side of a river.
But, from the first moment when Christiane began to indulge in
coquetry, from the time when she resorted to all the native skill of
woman in beguiling men, when she conceived the thought of bringing this
slave of passion to his knees, in the same way that she would have
undertaken to win a game at croquet, he allowed himself to yield, this
candid libertine, to the attack of this simpleton, and began to love
her.
And now he became awkward, restless, nervous, and she treated him
as a cat does a mouse. With another woman he would not have been
embarrassed; he would have spoken out; he would have conquered by his
irresistible ardor; with her he did not dare, so different did she seem
from all those whom he had known. The others, in short, were women
already singed by life, to whom everything might be said, with whom
one could venture on the boldest appeals, murmuring close to their lips
the trembling words which set the blood aflame. He knew his power,
he felt that he was bound to triumph when he was able to communicate
freely to the soul, the heart, the senses of her whom he loved, the
impetuous desire by which he was ravaged.
With Christiane, he imagined himself by the side of a young girl,
so great a novice did he consider her; and all his resources seemed
paralyzed. And then he cared for her in a new sort of way, partly as
a man cares for a child, and partly as he does for his betrothed. He
desired her; and yet he was afraid of touching her, of soiling her,
of withering her bloom. He had no longing to clasp her tightly in
his arms, such as he had felt toward others, but rather to fall on
his knees, to kiss her robe, and to touch gently with his lips, with
an infinitely chaste and tender slowness, the little hairs about her
temples, the corners of her mouth, and her eyes, her closed eyes,
whose blue he could feel glancing out toward him, the charming glance
awakened under the drooping lids. He would have liked to protect her
against everyone and against everything, not to let her be elbowed by
common people, gaze at ugly people, or go near unclean people. He would
have liked to carry away the dirt of the street over which she walked,
the pebbles on the roads, the brambles and the branches in the wood,
to make all things easy and delicious around her, and to carry her
always, so that she should never walk. And he felt annoyed because she
had to talk to the other guests at the hotel, to eat the same food at
the _table d'hôte_, and submit to all the disagreeable and inevitable
little things that belong to everyday existence.
He knew not what to say to her so much were his thoughts absorbed
by her; and his powerlessness to express the state of his heart, to
accomplish any of the things that he wished to do, to testify to her
the imperious need of devoting himself to her which burned in his
veins, gave him some of the aspects of a chained wild beast, and, at
the same time, made him feel a strange desire to break into sobs.
All this she perceived without completely understanding it, and felt
amused by it with the malicious enjoyment of a coquette. When they had
lingered behind the others, and she felt from his look that he was
about to say something disquieting, she would abruptly begin to run,
in order to overtake her father, and, when she got up to him, would
exclaim: "Suppose we make a four-cornered game."
Four-cornered games served generally for the termination of the
excursions. They looked out for a glade at the end of a wider road than
usual, and they began to play like boys out for a walk.
The Oriol girls and Gontran himself took great delight in this
amusement, which satisfied that incessant longing to run that is to be
found in all young creatures. Paul Bretigny alone grumbled, beset by
other thoughts; then, growing animated by degrees he would join in the
game with more desperation than any of the others, in order to catch
Christiane, to touch her, to place his hand abruptly on her shoulder or
on her corsage.
The Marquis, whose indifferent and listless nature yielded in
everything, as long as his rest was not disturbed, sat down at the
foot of a tree, and watched his boarding-school at play, as he said. He
thought this quiet life very agreeable, and the entire world perfect.
However, Paul's behavior soon alarmed Christiane. One day she even
got afraid of him. One morning, they went with Gontran to the most
remote part of the oddly-shaped gap which is called the End of the
World. The gorge, becoming more and more narrow and winding, sank
into the mountain. They climbed over enormous rocks; they crossed the
little river by means of stepping-stones, and, having wheeled round
a lofty crag more than fifty meters in height which entirely blocked
up the cleft of the ravine, they found themselves in a kind of trench
encompassed between two gigantic walls, bare as far as their summits,
which were covered with trees and with verdure.
The stream formed a wide lake of bowl-like shape, and truly it was a
wild-looking chasm, strange and unexpected, such as one meets more
frequently in narratives than in nature. Now, on this day, Paul, gazing
at the projections of the rocky eminence which barred them out from
the road at the right where all pedestrians were compelled to halt,
remarked that it bore traces of having been scaled. He said: "Why, we
can go on farther."
Then, having clambered up the first ledge, not without difficulty, he
exclaimed: "Oh! this is charming! a little grove in the water--come on,
then!"
And, leaning backward, he drew Christiane up by the two hands,
while Gontran, feeling his way, planted his feet on all the slight
projections of the rock. The soil which had drifted down from the
summit had formed on this ledge a savage and bushy garden, in which the
stream ran across the roots. Another step, a little farther on, formed
a new barrier of this granite corridor. They climbed it, too,--then a
third; and they found themselves at the foot of an impassable wall from
which fell, straight and clear, a cascade twenty meters high into a
deep basin hollowed out by it, and buried under bindweeds and branches.
The cleft of the mountain had become so narrow that the two men,
clinging on by their hands, could touch its sides. Nothing further
could be seen, save a line of sky; nothing could be heard save the
murmur of the water. It might have been taken for one of those
undiscoverable retreats in which the Latin poets were wont to conceal
the antique nymphs. It seemed to Christiane as if she had just intruded
on the chamber of a fay.
Paul Bretigny said nothing. Gontran exclaimed: "Oh! how nice it would
be if a woman white and rosy-red were bathing in that water!"
They returned. The first two shelves were as easy to descend, but the
third frightened Christiane, so high and straight was it, without
any visible steps. Bretigny let himself slip down the rock; then,
stretching out his two arms toward her, "Jump," said he.
She would not venture. Not that she was afraid of falling, but she felt
afraid of him, afraid above all of his eyes. He gazed at her with the
avidity of a famished beast, with a passion which had grown ferocious;
and his two hands extended toward her had such an imperious attraction
for her that she was suddenly terrified and seized with a mad longing
to shriek, to run away, to climb up the mountain perpendicularly to
escape this irresistible appeal.
Her brother standing up behind her, cried: "Go on then!" and pushed her
forward. Feeling herself falling she shut her eyes, and, caught in a
gentle but powerful clasp, she felt, without seeing it, all the huge
body of the young man, whose panting warm breath passed over her face.
Then, she found herself on her feet once more, smiling, now that her
terror had vanished, while Gontran descended in his turn.
This emotion having rendered her prudent, she took care, for some days,
not to be alone with Bretigny, who now seemed to be prowling round her
like the wolf in the fable round a lamb.
But a grand excursion had been planned. They were to carry provisions
in the landau with six seats, and go to dine with the Oriol girls on
the border of the little lake of Tazenat, which in the language of the
country was called the "gour" of Tazenat, and then return at night by
moonlight. Accordingly, they started one afternoon of a day of burning
heat, under a devouring sun, which made the granite of the mountain as
hot as the floor of an oven.
The carriage ascended the mountain-side drawn by three horses, blowing,
and covered with sweat. The coachman was nodding on his seat, his head
hanging down; and at the side of the road ran legions of green lizards.
The heated atmosphere seemed filled with an invisible and oppressive
dust of fire. Sometimes it seemed hard, unyielding, dense, as they
passed through it, sometimes it stirred about and sent across their
faces ardent breaths of flame in which floated an odor of resin in the
midst of the long pine-wood.
Nobody in the carriage uttered a word. The three ladies, at the lower
end, closed their dazzled eyes, which they shaded with their red
parasols. The Marquis and Gontran, their foreheads wrapped round with
handkerchiefs, had fallen asleep. Paul was looking toward Christiane,
who was also watching him from under her lowered eyelids. And the
landau, sending up a column of smoking white dust, kept always toiling
up this interminable ascent.
When it had reached the plateau, the coachman straightened himself
up, the horses broke into a trot; and they drove through a beautiful,
undulating country, thickly-wooded, cultivated, studded with villages
and solitary houses here and there. In the distance, at the left,
could be seen the great truncated summits of the volcanoes. The lake
of Tazenat, which they were going to see, had been formed by the last
crater in the mountain chain of Auvergne. After they had been driving
for three hours, Paul said suddenly: "Look here, the lava-currents!"
Brown rocks, fantastically twisted, made cracks in the soil at the
border of the road. At the right could be seen a mountain, snub-nosed
in appearance, whose wide summit had a flat and hollow look. They took
a path, which seemed to pass into it through a triangular cutting; and
Christiane, who was standing erect, discovered all at once, in the
midst of a vast deep crater, a lovely lake, bright and round, like a
silver coin. The steep slopes of the mountain, wooded at the right and
bare at the left, sank toward the water, which they surrounded with
a high inclosure, regular in shape. And this placid water, level and
glittering, like the surface of a medal, reflected the trees on one
side, and on the other the barren slope, with a clearness so complete
that the edges escaped one's attention, and the only thing one saw
in this funnel, in whose center the blue sky was mirrored, was a
transparent, bottomless opening, which seemed to pass right through the
earth, pierced from end to end up to the other firmament.
The carriage could go no farther. They got down, and took a path
through the wooded side winding round the lake, under the trees,
halfway up the declivity of the mountain. This track, along which only
the woodcutters passed, was as green as a prairie; and, through the
branches, they could see the opposite side, and the water glittering at
the bottom of this mountain-lake.
Then they reached, through an opening in the wood, the very edge of the
water, where they sat down upon a sloping carpet of grass, overshadowed
by oak-trees.
They all stretched themselves on the green turf with sensuous and
exquisite delight. The men rolled themselves about in it, plunged their
hands into it; while the women, softly lying down on their sides,
placed their cheeks close to it, as if to seek there a refreshing
caress.
After the heat of the road, it was one of those sweet sensations so
deep and so grateful that they almost amount to pure happiness.
Then once more the Marquis went to sleep; Gontran speedily followed his
example. Paul began chatting with Christiane and the two young girls.
About what? About nothing in particular. From time to time, one of them
gave utterance to some phrase; another replied after a minute's pause,
and the lingering words seemed torpid in their mouths like the thoughts
within their minds.
But, the coachman having brought across to them the hamper which
contained the provisions, the Oriol girls, accustomed to domestic
duties in their own house, and still clinging to their active habits,
quickly proceeded to unpack it, and to prepare the dinner, of which the
party would by and by partake on the grass.
Paul lay on his back beside Christiane, who was in a reverie. And he
murmured, in so low a tone that she scarcely heard him, so low that his
words just grazed her ear, like those confused sounds that are borne on
by the wind: "These are the best days of my life."
Why did these vague words move her even to the bottom of her heart? Why
did she feel herself suddenly touched by an emotion such as she had
never experienced before?
She was gazing through the trees at a tiny house, a hut for persons
engaged in hunting and fishing, so narrow that it could barely contain
one small apartment. Paul followed the direction of her glance, and
said:
"Have you ever thought, Madame, what days passed together in a hut like
that might be for two persons who loved one another to distraction?
They would be alone in the world, truly alone, face to face! And,
if such a thing were possible, ought not one be ready to give up
everything in order to realize it, so rare, unseizable, and short-lived
is happiness? Do we find it in our everyday life? What more depressing
than to rise up without any ardent hope, to go through the same duties
dispassionately, to drink in moderation, to eat with discretion, and to
sleep tranquilly like a mere animal?"
She kept, all the time, staring at the little house; and her heart
swelled up, as if she were going to burst into tears; for, in one flash
of thought, she divined intoxicating joys, of whose existence she had
no conception till that moment.
Indeed, she was thinking how sweet it would be for two to be together
in this tiny abode hidden under the trees, facing that plaything of
a lake, that jewel of a lake, true mirror of love! One might feel
happy with nobody near, without a neighbor, without one sound of life,
alone with a lover, who would pass his hours kneeling at the feet of
the adored one, looking up at her, while her gaze wandered toward the
blue wave, and whispering tender words in her ear, while he kissed the
tips of her fingers. They would live there, amid the silence, beneath
the trees, at the bottom of that crater, which would hold all their
passion, like the limpid, unfathomable water, in the embrace of its
firm and regular inclosure, with no other horizon for their eyes save
the round line of the mountain's sides, with no other horizon for their
thoughts save the bliss of loving one another, with no other horizon
for their desires save kisses lingering and endless.
Were there, then, people on the earth who could enjoy days like this?
Yes, undoubtedly! And why not? Why had she not sooner known that such
joys exist?
The girls announced that dinner was ready. It was six o'clock already.
They roused up the Marquis and Gontran in order that they might squat
in Turkish fashion a short distance off, with the plates glistening
beside them in the grass. The two sisters kept waiting on them, and the
heedless men did not gainsay them. They ate at their leisure, flinging
the cast-off pieces and the bones of the chickens into the water. They
had brought champagne with them; the sudden noise of the first cork
jumping up produced a surprising effect on everyone, so unusual did it
appear in this solitary spot.
The day was declining; the air became impregnated with a delicious
coolness. As the evening stole on, a strange melancholy fell on the
water that lay sleeping at the bottom of the crater. Just as the sun
was about to disappear, the western sky burst out into flame, and the
lake suddenly assumed the aspect of a basin of fire. Then, when the
sun had gone to rest, the horizon becoming red like a brasier on the
point of being extinguished, the lake looked like a basin of blood. And
suddenly above the crest of mountain, the moon nearly at its full rose
up all pale in the still, cloudless firmament. Then, as the shadows
gradually spread over the earth, it ascended glittering and round
above the crater which was round also. It looked as if it were going
to let itself drop down into the chasm; and when it had risen far up
into the sky, the lake had the aspect of a basin of silver. Then, on
its surface, motionless all day long, trembling movements could now be
seen sometimes slow and sometimes rapid. It seemed as if some spirits
skimming just above the water were drawing across it invisible veils.
It was the big fish at the bottom, the venerable carp and the voracious
pike, who had come up to enjoy themselves in the moonlight.
The Oriol girls had put back all the plates, dishes, and bottles into
the hamper, which the coachman came to take away. They rose up to go.
As they were passing into the path under the trees, where rays of light
fell, like a silver shower, through the leaves and glittered on the
grass, Christiane, who was following the others with Paul in the rear,
suddenly heard a panting voice saying close to her ear: "I love you!--I
love you!--I love you!"
Her heart began to beat so wildly that she was near sinking to the
ground, and felt as if she could not move her limbs. Still she walked
on, like one distraught, ready to turn round, her arms hanging wide
and her lips tightly drawn. He had by this time caught the edge of the
little shawl which she had drawn over her shoulders, and was kissing it
frantically. She continued walking with such tottering steps that she
no longer could feel the soil beneath her feet.
And now she emerged from under the canopy of trees, and finding herself
in the full glare of the moonlight, she got the better of her agitation
with a desperate effort; but, before stepping into the landau and
losing sight of the lake, she half turned round to throw a long kiss
with both hands toward the water, which likewise embraced the man who
was following her.
On the return journey, she remained inert both in soul and body, dizzy,
cramped up, as if after a fall; and, the moment they reached the hotel,
she quickly rushed up to her own apartment, where she locked herself
in. Even when the door was bolted and the key turned in the lock, she
pressed her hand on it again, so much did she feel herself pursued and
desired. Then she remained trembling in the middle of the room, which
was nearly quite dark and had an empty look. The wax-candle placed on
the table cast on the walls the quivering shadows of the furniture and
of the curtains. Christiane sank into an armchair. All her thoughts
were rushing, leaping, flying away from her so that she found it
impossible to seize them, to hold them, to link them together. She felt
now ready to weep, without well knowing why, broken-hearted, wretched,
abandoned, in this empty room, lost in existence, just as in a forest.
Where was she going, what would she do?
Breathing with difficulty, she rose up, flung open the window and the
shutters in front of it, and leaned on her elbows over the balcony.
The air was refreshing. In the depths of the sky, wide and empty, too,
the distant moon, solitary and sad, having ascended now into the blue
heights of night, cast forth a hard, cold luster on the trees and on
the mountains.
The entire country lay asleep. Only the light strain of Saint Landri's
violin, which he played till a late hour every night, broke the deep
silence of the valley with its melancholy music. Christiane scarcely
heard it. It ceased, then began again--the shrill and dolorous cry of
the thin fiddlestrings.
And that moon lost in a desert sky, that feeble sound lost in the
silent night, filled her heart with such a sense of solitude that she
burst into sobs. She trembled and quivered to the very marrow of her
bones, shaken by anguish and by the shuddering sensations of people
attacked by some formidable malady; for suddenly it dawned upon her
mind that she, too, was all alone in existence.
She had never realized this until to-day, and now she felt it so
vividly in the distress of her soul that she imagined she was going mad.
She had a father! a brother! a husband! She loved them still, and
they loved her. And here she was all at once separated from them, she
had become a stranger to them as if she scarcely knew them. The calm
affection of her father, the friendly companionship of her brother, the
cold tenderness of her husband, appeared to her nothing any longer,
nothing any longer. Her husband! This, her husband, the rosy-cheeked
man who was accustomed to say to her in a careless tone, "Are you
going far, dear, this morning?" She belonged to him, to this man, body
and soul, by the mere force of a contract. Was this possible? Ah! how
lonely and lost she felt herself! She closed her eyes to look into her
own mind, into the lowest depths of her thoughts.
And she could see, as she evoked them out of her inner consciousness
the faces of all those who lived around her--her father, careless and
tranquil, happy as long as nobody disturbed his repose; her brother,
scoffing and sceptical; her husband moving about, his head full of
figures, and with the announcement on his lips, "I have just done a
fine stroke of business!" when he should have said, "I love you!"
Another man had murmured that word a little while ago, and it was still
vibrating in her ear and in her heart. She could see him also, this
other man, devouring her with his fixed look; and, if he had been near
her at that moment, she would have flung herself into his arms!