I did not choose to wait until she woke up, I sprang from the bed, where
Elaine was still sleeping, with her disheveled hair lying on the
lace-edged pillows. Her complexion was almost transparent, her lips were
half open, as if she were dreaming, and she seemed so overcome with
sleep, that I felt much emotion when I looked at her.
I drank four glasses of mild champagne, one after the other, as quickly
as I could, but it did not quench my thirst. I was feverish and would
have given anything in the world for something to interest me suddenly
and have absorbed me and lifted me out of that slough in which my heart
and my brain were being engulfed, as if in a quicksand. I did not
venture to avow to myself what was making me so dejected, what was
torturing me and driving me mad with grief, or to scrutinize the muddy
bottom of my present thoughts sincerely and courageously, to question
myself and to pull myself together.
It would have been so odious, so infamous, to harbor such suspicions
unjustly, to accuse that adorable creature who was not yet twenty, whom
I loved, and _who seemed to love me_, without having certain proofs,
that I felt that I was blushing at the idea that I had any doubt of her
innocence. Ah! Why did I marry?
I had a sufficient income to enable me to live as I liked, to pay
beautiful women who pleased me, whom I chanced to meet, and who amused
me, and who sometimes gave me unexpected proofs of affection, but I had
never allowed myself to be caught altogether, and in order to keep my
heart warm, I had some romantic and sentimental friendships with women
in society, some of those delightful flirtations which have an
appearance of love, which fill up the idleness of a useless life with a
number of unexpected sensations, with small duties and vague subtle
pleasures!
And was I now going to be like one of those ships which an unskillful
turn of the helm runs ashore as it is leaving the harbor? What terrible
trials were awaiting me, what sorrows and what struggles?
A chaffing friend said to me one night in joke at the club, when I had
just broken one of those banks, which form an epoch in a player's life:
"If I were in your place, Jacques, I should distrust such runs of luck
as that, for one always has to pay for them sooner or later!"
Sooner or later!
I half opened the bedroom door gently. Elaine was in one of those heavy
sleeps that follow intoxication. Who could tell whether, when she opened
her eyes and called me, surprised at not finding herself in my arms, her
whole being would not become languid, and suddenly sink into a state of
prostration? I wanted to reason with myself, and bring myself face to
face with those cursed suggestions, as one does with a skittish horse
before some object that frightens it, and to evoke the recollection of
every hour, every minute of that first night of love, and to extract the
secret from her....
Elaine's looks and radiant smile were overflowing with happiness, and
she had the air of a conqueror who is proud of his triumph, for she was
now a _woman_ already, and we had _at least been alone_ in this
modernized country house, which had been redecorated and smartened up to
serve as the frame for our affection! She hardly seemed to know what she
was saying or doing, and ran from room to room in her light morning
dress of mauve crape, without exactly knowing where to sit, and almost
dazzled by the light of the lamps that had large shades in the shape of
rose leaves over them.
There was no embarrassment, no hesitation, no shamefaced looks, no
recoiling from the arms that were stretched out to her, or from the lips
that begged; none of those delightful little pieces of awkwardness which
show a virgin soul free from all perversion, in her manner of sitting on
my knees, or putting her bare arms round my neck, and of offering me the
back of her neck and her lips to kiss, but she laughed nervously, and
her supple form trembled when I kissed her passionately on various
places, and she said things to me that were suitable for being whispered
on the pillows, while a strange languor overshadowed her eyes, and
dilated her nostrils.
And suddenly with a mocking gesture, which seemed to bid defiance to the
supper that was laid on a small table, cold meat of various kinds,
plates of fruit and of cakes, the ice pail, from which the neck of a
bottle of champagne protruded, she said merrily:
"I am not at all hungry, dear; let us have supper later! what do you
say?"
She half turned round to the large bed, which seemed to be quite ready
for us, and which looked white in the shadow of the recess in which it
stood, with its two white, untouched, almost solemn pillows. She was not
smiling any more; there was a bluish gleam in her eyes, like that of
burning alcohol, and I lost my head. Elaine did not try to escape, and
did not utter a complaint.
Oh! that night of torture and delight, that night which ought never to
have ended!
I determined that I would be as patient as a policeman who is trying to
discover the traces of a crime, that I would investigate the past of
this girl, about which I knew nothing, as I should be sure to discover
some proof, some important reminiscence, some servant who had been her
accomplice.
And yet I adored her, my pretty, my divine Elaine, and I would consent
no matter to what if only she were what I dreamt her, what I wished her
to be, if only this nightmare would go and no longer rise up between her
and me.
When she woke up, she spoke to me in her coaxing voice.... Oh! her
kisses, again her kisses, always her kisses, in spite of everything!
Oh! to have believed blindly, to have believed on my knees that she was
not lying, that she was not making a mockery of my tenderness, and that
she had never belonged, and never would belong, to any one but me!