Even the sight of our bedroom became painful to me. I was frightened of
it; I was uncomfortable there, and felt a kind of repulsion in going
there. It seemed to me as if Elaine were repeating a part that someone
else had taught her, and I almost hoped that in a moment of
forgetfulness she would allow her secret to escape her, and pronounce
some name that was not mine, and I used to keep awake, with my ears on
the alert, in the hope that she might betray herself in her sleep and
murmur some revealing word, as she recalled the past, and my temples
throbbed and my whole body trembled with excitement.
But when this was over and I saw her sleeping peacefully as a little
girl who was tired with playing, with parted lips and disheveled hair,
and measured the full extent of the stupidity of my hatred and the
sacrilegious madness of my jealousy, my heart softened and I fell into
such a state of profound and absolute distress that I thought I should
have died of it, and large drops of cold perspiration ran down my cheeks
and tears fell from my eyes, and I got up, so that my sobs might not
disturb her rest and wake her.
As this could not continue, however, I told her one day that I felt so
exhausted and ill that I should prefer to sleep in my own room. She
appeared to believe me and merely said:
"As you please, my dear!" but her blue eyes suddenly assumed such an
anxious, such a grieved look, that I turned my head aside, so as not to
see them....