CHAPTER XVI

THE STORY OF A SUSPICION

'What a wicked woman! What a wicked woman!' muttered René as he went down the staircase, now re-echoing with the shouts of the call-boy. He trembled with agitation and asked himself, 'What harm have I ever done her?' forgetting that for a quarter of an hour he had represented Claude in Colette's eyes. Perhaps the joy felt by the actress in wounding him to the quick might have had its rise in the malice often occasioned by a man's unwillingness to pay his friend's mistress attentions. The loyalty of one man to another ranks amongst the sentiments most odious to women.

'What have I done to her?' repeated the poet, unable to find an answer to his question, unable even to collect his thoughts. There are phrases which, flung at us unexpectedly, will stun us as surely as any blow physically dealt. They bring about a sudden cessation of all consciousness--a cessation even of pain. René was not quite himself again until he stood in the Place du Palais Royal amid its throng of traffic. The first feeling that animated him was a fit of furious rage against Claude. 'The perfidious wretch!' he cried; 'how could he trust my secret to a creature like that? And such a secret, too! What did he know about it?' A slight blush and a moment's hesitation in uttering her name. 'He thinks that is sufficient evidence upon which to slander a woman he hardly knows, and in the ears, too, of a hussy whose infamy he proclaims from the housetops!'

He recalled to mind every detail of the only conversation in which Larcher might have discovered his nascent feelings for Suzanne. He saw himself once more in Claude's rooms in the Rue de Varenne, with the manuscripts and proofs strewn about, and the writer's face looking livid in the greenish light of the stained-glass windows. He saw the sceptical smile flit across that face whilst the sarcastic lips uttered the words: 'So you are not in love with her!' Borne on the same wave of memory came other visions connected with the last. He heard Suzanne's voice saying on the occasion of his third visit: 'Your friend M. Larcher--I am sure he doesn't like me.' Had she not expressed her distrust of him only that morning? Her suspicions had, indeed, been only too well justified. And then if he had only contented himself with coupling her name with his, René's. But he had even dared to make this other vile accusation--that she was kept by Desforges! Not that René harboured the least shadow of a suspicion against his divine mistress--it was not that which maddened him--but the knowledge that Colette had not lied in claiming to have heard this infamous thing from Larcher. If Larcher repeated it, he must have got it from some one else. And if Suzanne had insisted, as she had twice done, upon being told how Claude spoke of her, it was because she knew she was exposed to the insult of this abominable calumny.

René remembered the old beau whom he had once met at her house, with his military bearing, his red, bloated face, and his grey hair. And then he saw her as she had looked only that morning, so fair, so white, so dainty--with her pale blue eyes and that peculiar air of refinement that lent an almost ideal charm to her most passionate embraces. Was it possible that such vile calumnies could have been spread concerning this woman! 'People are too horribly wicked!' exclaimed René aloud. 'And as for Claude----' His affection for him had been so sincere, and it was this man, his dearest friend, who had spoken of Suzanne in such a shameless manner, like a blackguard and a traitor. What a contrast with the poor angel thus insulted, who, knowing it, had taken no further revenge than to say, 'I have forgiven him!' On every other occasion when she had spoken of Claude it had been to admire him for his talents and to pity him for his faults. Another phrase of Suzanne's suddenly struck him. 'That is no reason why he should revenge himself by forcing his attentions upon any woman chance throws in his way. I got quite angry one day when he was seated next to me at table.' 'That is the reason!' said the poet to himself with returning anger; 'he has paid her attentions which she has repelled, and so he slanders her. It is too disgusting!'

A prey to these painful reflections, René had walked as far as the Place de l'Opéra, and, mechanically turning to the right, had ascended the boulevard without really noticing where he was. Hatred and rancour were so repugnant to his soul that these feelings were soon supplanted by the love he bore the beautiful woman so basely reviled by the vindictive actress. What was she doing at that moment? She was yonder, in a box at the Gymnase, obliged to sit out some play with her husband, and, no doubt, sadly dreaming of their love and their last kisses. No sooner had he conjured up her adorable image than he was seized with an instinctive and irresistible longing to see her in the flesh. He hailed a passing cab and gave the driver the name of the theatre. How often had he been similarly tempted to go to some place of amusement when he knew Suzanne would be there! But having given his mistress a promise that he would not do so, he had always scrupulously repelled the temptation. Besides, he took a curious pleasure in dwelling upon the absolute distinction between the two Suzannes--between the woman of fashion and his simple love--above all, he feared to meet Paul Moraines. He had read Ernest Feydeau's 'Fanny,' and was more afraid of the terrible jealousy described in that fine work than of death itself. To an analytical writer, like Claude, this would have been an excellent reason for seeking an encounter with the husband, so as to have a new kind of wound to examine under the microscope. The poets who have not turned their art into a trade nor their hearts into a raree-show are possessed of an instinct which makes them avoid such degrading experiments; they respect the beauty of their own feelings.

Whilst the cab was rolling along towards the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle all these scruples, which René had once so religiously observed, returned to him. But Colette's words had moved him more deeply than he cared to admit. A hideous vision had flashed across his brain. He half feared that it might come again, and he knew that Suzanne's presence was the best preventive. Lovers frequently have these apparently unwarranted ideas--the results of an instinct of self-preservation which our feelings, like animate beings, possess. The cab rolled on whilst René defended his infraction of the agreement made with his mistress. 'If she could know what I have been obliged to hear, would she not be the first to say, "Come and read my love for you in my face?" Besides, I shall only look at her for a quarter of an hour, and then go away purged of this stain. And what of the husband? Well, I must see him sooner or later, and she tells me he is nothing to her!' Madame Moraines had not failed to make her favourite lover swallow the improbable fable served up by all married women to their paramours, though sometimes the fable is true--for woman will be a riddle to all eternity--as the reports of the divorce cases prove. In the delicacy with which Suzanne had allayed his most secret and least legitimate feelings of jealousy René found an additional pretext for denouncing those who slandered this sublime creature. 'This woman the mistress of Desforges! Why? For money? What nonsense! She, the daughter of a Cabinet Minister and the wife of a business man! Claude, Claude! how could you?'

This tumult of ideas was somewhat stilled by the necessity for action as soon as the poet reached the doors of the Gymnase. He was most anxious that he should not be seen by Suzanne, and stood on the steps outside for a moment lost in reflection. The first act was just over, as he could see by the people flocking out, and this circumstance furnished him with an idea for beholding his mistress without being observed by her. He would first take a ticket for one of the cheaper seats in order to get into the house; then, having found out where Suzanne was sitting--which he could easily do during the interval from the corridor at the side of the stalls--he would take a better seat, from which he could safely feast his eyes upon her adorable features.

As he entered the theatre he was startled for a moment by coming face to face with the Marquis de Hère, one of the swells he had seen at Madame Komof's; the young nobleman, wearing a sprig of heather in his button-hole, was swinging his stick and humming an air from the then popular 'Cloches de Corneville' so lightly that he could hardly hear it himself. He brushed past René without recognizing him, or appearing to do so, any more than Salvaney had done an hour ago. The poet quickly made his way to one of the entrances to the stalls. He had not long to look; Madame Moraines was in the third box from the stage, almost opposite him. She occupied the front seat, and there were two men in the background; one, a fine young fellow, with a long beard and a pale complexion--the husband, no doubt--was standing up. The other, who was seated----

But why had chance--it could only be chance--brought into that box on this very night the man whose name the wretched actress had just coupled with Suzanne's? Yes, it was indeed Desforges who occupied the chair behind Madame Moraines. The poet had not the slightest difficulty in recognizing the Baron's energetic countenance, his piercing brown eyes, his fair moustache, his high colour, and his forehead surmounted by a wealth of almost white hair. Why did it distress René to see this old beau talking so familiarly to Suzanne as she sat there fanning herself, her face turned towards him, whilst Moraines scanned the boxes with his opera-glass? Why did it cause him such pain as to make him turn hastily away? For the first time since he had had the happiness to catch sight of this woman on the threshold of the Komof mansion, looking so fair and slim in her red gown, suspicion had entered his soul.

What suspicion? He could not possibly have expressed it in words. And yet? When Suzanne had spoken to him about the theatre that morning she had told him that she was going alone with her husband. What motive had led her to pervert the truth? The detail, it was true, was of no importance. But a lie, be it great or small, is still a lie. After all, perhaps Desforges was only visiting them in their box during the interval. This explanation seemed so natural as well as acceptable that René adopted it on the spot.

Returning to the box-office, he asked for an outside stall, on the left, having calculated that from this seat he would have the best opportunity of watching the Moraines without being seen himself. Meanwhile the audience had again settled down and the curtain rose. Desforges did not leave the box. He kept his seat at the back, leaning forward to talk to Suzanne. But why not? Could not his presence be explained in a thousand ways without Suzanne having lied? Could not Moraines have invited him without his wife's knowledge? He spoke familiarly to the woman, it is true, and she answered him in a similar manner. But had not he, René, met him at her house? A gentleman is sitting down in a theatre talking to a lady he knows. Does that prove that there is a vile bond of sin existing between them?

The poet argued in this fashion, and his arguments would have seemed to him irrefutable if he had seen on Suzanne's face a single one of those traits of melancholy he had expected to find. On the contrary, as she sat there in her elegant theatre-gown of black lace, with a little pink bonnet on her fair hair, eating, with dainty fingers, from the box of crystallised fruit that stood before her, she looked thoroughly happy, and as though she had not a care in the world. She laughed so heartily at the jokes in the piece, and her eyes were so bright and sparkling as she chatted with her two companions, that it seemed impossible to imagine she had only that morning paid a visit to the shrine of her most secret and heartfelt love. The emotions called forth by her meeting with her lover had left so few traces on her face, now beaming with pleasure, that René scarcely believed his own eyes. He had expected to find her so very different.

The husband, too, with cordial joviality expressed in his manly features, seemed by no means the crabbed and suspicious recluse Suzanne had led her credulous lover to imagine. The unhappy fellow had come to the theatre to get rid of the pain which Colette's words had caused him, but when he reached home his distress had only increased. It has often been said that we should not keep many friends if we could hear those to whom we give that title speak of us behind our back. It is an even less satisfactory experiment to take by surprise the woman we love. René had just tried it, but he was too passionately fond of Suzanne to believe in this first vision of his Madonna's duplicity.

'What am I worrying about after all?' he thought, on waking next morning, and finding that he was still a prey to his painful feelings. 'That she was in a good temper last night? I must be very selfish to reproach her with that! That Baron Desforges was in her box when she had told me that she was going to the theatre with her husband alone? She will explain that next time I see her. That her husband's face was not in keeping with his character? Appearances are so deceptive! How thoroughly have I been deceived in Claude Larcher, with his wheedling ways and his frank face! How often has he done me a favour and then pretended he had forgotten it, and yet how basely he has betrayed me after all!'

All the cruel impressions he had experienced on the preceding evening were now concentrated in a fresh and more furious fit of resentment against the man who, by his wicked gossip, had been the primary cause of his trouble. In the excess of his unjust anger René ignored the unquestionable merits of his friend and protector--absolute disinterestedness, a devotion that hoped for no return, and a total lack of literary envy. He was not even charitable enough to admit that Claude might have spoken to Colette unthinkingly and incautiously, but without any treacherous intentions. Suzanne's lover felt that he could not remain the friend of a man who had gone so far as to say what Larcher had said of his mistress. That is what René kept repeating to himself the whole day. On his return from the Bibliothèque, where he had found it almost impossible to work, he sat down to his table to write this villain one of those letters that are not easily forgotten. Having finished it, he read it over. The terms in which he defended Madame Moraines proclaimed his love, and now more than ever did he wish to keep that a secret from Claude.

'What is the use of writing to him at all?' he thought; 'when he comes back I will tell him what I think of him--that is much better.'

He was just about to destroy this dangerous letter when Emilie came in, as she often did before dinner, to ask him how he was getting on with his work. With a woman's innate curiosity, she read the address on the envelope, and said, 'Oh! is Claude in Venice? Then you've heard from him!'

'Never utter that name before me again!'replied René, tearing up the letter in a kind of cool rage.

Emilie said no more. She had not been mistaken in her brother's accents. René was in pain, and his anger against Claude was very great; but since he was silent concerning its cause, his sister knew that the latter must be something more than a mere literary dispute. By that intuition which always accompanies tender affection, Emilie guessed that the two writers had quarrelled on account of Madame Moraines, whose name René never mentioned now, and whom she was beginning to hate for the same reasons that had at first prompted her to like her. For some weeks past she had noticed a great mental and physical change coming over her brother. Although a model of purity herself, she was shrewd enough to attribute this degeneration to its true cause. She noticed it as she copied the fragments of the 'Savonarola' in the same way as she had copied the 'Sigisbée'; and although her admiration for the lightest trifle that came from René's pen was intense, there were many signs by which she could see how differently the two works had been inspired--from the number of lines written at each sitting to the continual reconstruction of the scenes and even to the handwriting, which had lost a little of its bold character.

The bubbling spring of clear, fresh poetry in which the 'Sigisbée' had had its source seemed to have dried up. What change had taken place in René's life? A woman had entered it, and it was therefore to this woman's influence that Emilie attributed the momentary impairment of the poet's faculties. She went still further, and hated this unknown but formidable creature for the pain inflicted on Rosalie. By a strange lapse of memory, frequently met with in generous natures, she forgot what part she had herself taken in her brother's rupture with his former _fiancée._ It was Madame Moraines whom she blamed for it all, and now this same woman was embroiling René with the best and most devoted of his friends--the one whom his faithful sister preferred because she had gauged the strength of his friendship.

'But how could it have happened,' she thought, 'since Claude is not here?'

She cudgelled her brains for a solution to this problem whilst attending to her household duties, hearing Constant's home lessons, making out Fresneau's bills, and conscientiously examining every button-hole and seam of her brother's linen. René was shut up in his room, where everything reminded him of Suzanne's one heavenly visit, and with feverish impatience he awaited the day appointed for their next meeting. Slander was doing its secret work, like some venomous sting. A poisoned man will go about without knowing that he is ill, except for a vague feeling of restlessness, but all the while the virus is fermenting in his blood and will produce sudden and terrible results.

The poet still treated the shameful accusations brought by Colette against Suzanne with scorn, but, by dint of pondering on her words in order to refute them, his mind became more accustomed to their tenour. At the moment when the actress had made her terrible charge he had not stooped to rebut it; but now, as he turned it over in his mind, he tried to save himself from a terrible abyss of doubt and from the most degrading jealousy by clutching at the marks of sincerity Suzanne had given him. What, then, were his feelings when, at the very outset of their next meeting, he received undeniable proofs that her sincerity was not what he had thought it?

He had reached the Rue des Dames with a troubled look on his face that had not escaped Suzanne. In reply to her solicitous inquiries he had pretended that it was due to an unfair article that had appeared in some paper, but had almost immediately felt ashamed of this innocent excuse, so sweetly had his mistress rebuked him.

'You big baby, you cannot have success without inspiring jealousy.'

'Let us talk about you instead,' he replied, and then asked, with a beating heart: What have you been doing since I saw you last?'

Had Suzanne been watching him at that moment she must have seen his agitation. It was a trap--innocent and simple enough--but a trap for all that. In three times twenty-four hours suspicion had brought the enthusiastic lover to this degree of distrust. But Suzanne could not know this, for he was treating her in exactly the same way as she was treating Desforges. She did not think René capable of stepping out of the only _rôle_ in which she had seen him. How could she imagine that this simple boy was trying to catch her?

'What have I been doing?' she repeated. 'First of all I went to the Gymnase the other evening with my husband. Fortunately we haven't much to say to each other, so I could think of you just as well as if I were alone--I do feel so alone when I am with him. You talk of the troubles of your literary life--if you only knew the misery of my so-called life of pleasure and the loneliness of these weary _tête-à-têtes!_'

'Did you feel bored at the theatre, then?' continued René.

'You were not there,' she replied with a smile, and looked more intently at him. 'What is the matter, love?'

She had never seen this bitter, almost hard, expression on René's face.

'It's very stupid of me, but I can't forget that article,' said the poet.

'Was it so very bad, then? Where did it appear?' she asked, her instinct of danger thoroughly aroused; but René, being unable to reply to this unexpected question, merely stammered, 'It isn't worth your troubling to read it.'

This only confirmed her suspicions--he was angry with her about something. A question rose to her lips: 'Has some one been speaking ill of me?' Her diplomacy, however, got the better of her impetuosity. Is not anxiety to disarm suspicion almost a confession in itself? The really innocent are quite callous. Her best course was to find out what René had been doing himself, and what persons he had seen who might have told him something.

'Did you go and see Mademoiselle Rigaud?' she asked, indifferently.

'Yes,' replied René, unable to disguise his embarrassment at the question.

'And has she forgiven poor Claude?' continued Suzanne.

'No,' he rejoined, adding: 'She is a very bad woman,' and in such a bitter tone that Madame Moraines at once guessed part of the truth. The actress must certainly have spoken of her to René. She was again seized with a desire to provoke his confidence, and reflected that the surest means of attaining her object was by intoxicating her lover with passion. She knew how powerless he would be to resist the emotions her caresses would let loose, and at once sealed his lips with a long kiss. By the silent and frenzied ardour with which he returned it Suzanne understood not only that René had suffered, but that she had, to a great extent, been the cause.

In her sweetest voice, and in tones best calculated to reach that heart which had always been open to her, she said, 'What is this trouble that you won't tell me?'

Had she uttered those words at the beginning of their interview he would not have been able to resist them. Amidst tears and kisses, he would have repeated what Colette had said! But alas! it was no longer Colette's words that caused him his present sufferings. What now gave him frightful pain and pierced his heart like a dagger was the fact of having caught her, his idol, in a deliberate lie. Yes, she had lied; this time there was no doubt about it. She had told him that she had been to the theatre with her husband only, and that was false; that she had been sad, and that was false too. Could he reply to her question, which betrayed affectionate concern, by two such clear, explicit, and irrefutable charges? He had not the courage to do it, and got out of the dilemma by repeating his former reply. Suzanne looked at him, and he was obliged to turn his head. She only sighed and said, 'Poor René!' and, as it was almost time for her to go, she pushed her inquiries no further.

'He will tell me all about it next time,' she thought as she went home. In spite of herself she was worried by René's silence. Her love for the poet was sincere, though it was a very different passion from that which she expressed in words. Before all else it was a physical love, but, corrupted as Suzanne was by her life and her surroundings, or perhaps because of this very corruption, the poet's nobility of soul did not fail to impress her. And to such an extent that she imagined their romance would be robbed of half its delight if ever the circle of illusions she had drawn round him were broken. That some one had tried to break this magic circle was evident, and this some one could only be Colette. Everything seemed to prove it. But, on the other hand, what reason could the actress have for hating her, Suzanne, whom she probably did not know, even by name? Colette and Claude were lovers, and here Madame Moraines again came upon the man whom she had distrusted from the first day. If Colette had spoken to René about her, Claude himself must have spoken about her to Colette. At this point her ideas became confused. Larcher had never seen her with René. And the latter, whose word she did not doubt, had told her that he had confided nothing to his friend.

'I am on the wrong track,' thought Suzanne. Argue as she would, she could not convince herself that René was so troubled on account of this pretended newspaper article. There was danger in store for the dear relations that existed between them. She felt it, and the feeling became still more pronounced by what her husband told her on the very next day after her unsatisfactory interview with René.

It was just before seven, and Suzanne was alone in the little _salon_ where she had first cast her net over the poet--a net as finely woven and as yielding as the web in which the spider catches the unwary fly. She had had more callers than usual that afternoon, and Desforges had only just gone. Suddenly Paul came in his wonted noisy way and in high animal spirits. Seizing her by the waist--for she had started up at his boisterous entry--he said, 'Give me a kiss--no, two kisses,' taking one after the other, 'as a reward for having been good.' Seeing the look of interrogation in Suzanne's eyes, he added, 'I have at last paid Madame Komof that visit I've owed her for so long. Whom do you think I met there? Guess--that young poet, René Vincy. I can't understand why Desforges doesn't like him. He's a charming fellow; he pleased me immensely. We had quite a long talk. I told him that you would be very glad to see him. Was I doing right?'

'Quite right,' replied Suzanne; 'and who else was there?'

Whilst her husband was reciting a list of familiar names she was thinking: 'What reason had René for going to Madame Komof's?' This was the first call of that kind he had made since the beginning of their attachment. He had so often said to his mistress: 'I want only you and my work.' It had been his custom during the past few months to give her a full account not only of what he had done, but of what he was going to do, and yet he had said nothing of this visit, so entirely out of keeping with his present mode of life. And he had met Paul, who had no doubt proved himself the very opposite of what his wife had described him to be.

Suzanne felt quite out of temper with the kindhearted fellow who had been guilty of calling on the Comtesse on the same day as the poet, and she said, in an almost petulant tone: 'I am sure you haven't written to Crucé for that Alençon.'

'I have written,' replied Moraines, with an air of triumph, 'and you shall have it.' Crucé, who acted as a sort of private art broker, had spoken to Suzanne about some old lace, and it was this she wished her husband to get her. From time to time she would ask him for something that she could show her friends and say, 'Paul is so good to me. This a present he brought me only the other day.' She would forget to add that the money for such presents generally came from Desforges--in an indirect way, it is true. Although the Baron seldom troubled himself with business matters except so far as the careful investment of his capital necessitated, he often had opportunities for speculating with almost absolute safety, and always gave Moraines a chance of doing the same. The Compagnie du Nord, of which Desforges was a director, had recently taken over a local line that was on the brink of ruin. Paul had succeeded in making a profit of thirty thousand francs by purchasing some shares at the right moment, and it was out of this profit that Suzanne was going to have her lace. This little business operation, too, had indirectly led to a somewhat strange scene between René and his mistress.

In the course of conversation she had asked him how much the 'Sigisbée' had produced, adding, 'What have you done with all that money?'

'I don't know,' René had replied, with a laugh. 'My sister bought me some stock with the first few thousand francs, and I have kept the rest in my drawer.' 'Will you let me talk to you like a sister, too?' she had said. 'A friend of ours is a director of the Compagnie du Nord, and he has given us a valuable tip. Do you promise to keep it a secret?' Thereupon she had explained to him how to get hold of some shares. 'Give your orders to-morrow, and you can make as much as you like.'

'Hold your tongue!' René had said, putting his hand over her mouth. 'I know it's very kind of you to talk like that, but I can't allow you to give me that sort of information. I should feel ashamed of myself.'

He had spoken so seriously that Suzanne had not dared to press the matter, though his scruples had appeared to her somewhat ridiculous. But then, if he had not been so unsophisticated and such a _gobeur_, as she called him in that horrible Parisian slang that spares not even the highest forms of sentiment, would she have been so fond of him? And yet it was this very innocence of soul that she feared. If ever he should get to hear what her life was really like, how his noble heart would turn against her, and how incompatible it would be with his high sense of honour ever to forgive her! A hint had, nevertheless, somehow reached him. In going over the different signs of danger that she had noticed one after another--René's trouble, his anger against Colette Rigaud, his reticence and his unexpected visit to Madame Komof--Suzanne said to herself: 'I made a mistake in not getting him to explain at once.'

When, therefore, she made her appearance in the Rue des Dames a few days later she was fully determined not to fall into the same error again. She saw at once that the poet was even more distressed than before, though she pretended not to notice this distress nor the cool manner in which he received her first kiss. With a sad smile she said to him:

'It was very silly of you, dear, not to tell me you were about to call on the Comtesse. I would have taken care that you were spared a meeting which must have been very painful?'

'Painful?' repeated René in an ironical tone that Suzanne had never heard him use before, 'why, M. Moraines was charming.'

'Yes,' she replied, 'you have made a conquest. He, so sarcastic as a rule, spoke of you with an enthusiasm that really pained me. Didn't he invite you to call on us? You may be proud. It is so rare that he welcomes a new face. Poor René,' she continued, placing both her hands on her lover's shoulder, and laying her cheek on her hands, 'how you must have suffered!'

'I have indeed suffered,' replied René, in a hollow voice. He looked at the pretty face so near his own and remembered what Suzanne had said to him in the Louvre before the portrait of the Giorgione's mistress, 'How can anyone lie with a face like that?' Yet she had lied to him. And what proof had he that she had not been lying all along? Whilst a prey to the torments of suspicion, and especially since his meeting with Paul, the most frightful conjectures had entered his mind. The contrast between the Moraines he had seen and the tyrannical husband described by Suzanne had been too great. 'Why has she deceived me on that point too?' René had asked himself.

He had called on Madame Komof without any distinct aim, but in the secret hope of hearing Suzanne spoken of by those of her own set. They at least would be sure to know her! But alas! his conversation with Moraines had sufficed to involve him in more horrible doubt than ever. One thing was now very plain to him; Suzanne had used her husband as a bugbear to keep him, René, from visiting their house. Why--if it were not that she had something in her life to hide? What was this something? Colette had taken upon herself to answer this question in advance. Under the influence of that horrible suspicion, René had conceived a plan, very simple of execution, and the result of which he thought would prove decisive. He would take advantage of the husband's invitation to ask Suzanne for permission to visit her at home. If she said yes, she had nothing to hide; if she said no----

And as this resolution recurred to the poet he continued to gaze upon that adorable face resting on his shoulder. Each one of those dear features recalled fresh memories! Those eyes so clear and blue--what faith he had had in them! That noble brow--what refined thoughts he had imagined it to shelter! Those delicate, mobile lips--with what sweet abandonment had he heard them speak! No--what Colette had told him was impossible! But why these lies--a first, a second, and a third time? Yes, she had lied three times. There is no such thing as a trivial lie. René understood this now, and felt that confidence, like love, is governed by the great law of all or nothing. We have it or we have it not. Those who have lost it know this only too well.

'My poor René!' repeated Suzanne. She saw that he was in that state when compassion softens the heart and opens it wide.

'Poor indeed!' replied the poet, moved by this mark of pity, that came just when he had most need of it; then, looking into her eyes, he unburdened himself.

'Listen, Suzanne, I prefer to tell you all. I have come to the conclusion that the life we are leading now cannot last. It makes me too unhappy--it does not satisfy my love. To see you only by stealth, an hour to-day and an hour in a few days' time, to know nothing of what you are doing, to share no part of your life, is too cruel. Be quiet--let me speak. There was a weighty objection to my being received in your house--your husband. Well--I have seen him. I have borne the ordeal. We have shaken hands. Since it is done, allow me at least to benefit by my effort. I know there is nothing very noble in what I am saying, but I have no desire to be noble--I love you. I feel that my mind is getting full of all kinds of ideas about you. I entreat you to let me come to your house, to live in your world, to see you elsewhere than here, where we meet only to--'

'To love each other!' she exclaimed, interrupting him and shaking her head; 'do not utter blasphemy.' Then, sinking down into a chair, she continued, 'Alas! my beautiful dream is over then--that dream in which you seemed to take as much delight as I--the dream of a love all to ourselves, and only for ourselves, with none of those compromises that horrified us both!'

'Then won't you let me come and see you as I ask?' said René, returning to the charge.

'What you are asking me to do is to kill our happiness,' cried Suzanne; 'so sensitive as I know you to be, you would never stand the shocks to which you would be exposed. You know nothing of that world in which I am obliged to live, and how unfitted you are for it. And afterwards you would hold me responsible for your disenchantment. Give up this fatal idea, love, give it up for my sake.'

'What is there then in this life of yours that I may not see?' asked the poet, looking at her fixedly. He could not be aware that Suzanne had only one aim in view--to get him to tell her the reason of this sudden desire--for she concluded that it must be the same reason which had caused his distress the other day, and which had taken him to Madame Komof's so unexpectedly. She was not mistaken as to René's meaning, and replied in the broken accents of a woman unjustly accused:

'How can you talk to me like that, René? Some one must have poisoned your mind. You cannot have got hold of such ideas yourself. Come to my house, love! Come as often as you like! "Something in my life that you may not see"--I, who would rather die than tell you a lie!'

'Then why did you tell me a lie the other day?' cried René. Conquered by the despair he thought he could see in those beautiful eyes, disarmed by the permission she had just given him, unable to keep the secret of his grief any longer, he felt that necessity of unbosoming himself which, in a quarrel with a woman, is as good as putting one's head into a noose.

'I told you a lie?' exclaimed Suzanne.

'Yes, when you told me you went to the theatre with your husband.'

'But I did go----'

'So did I,' said René; 'there was some one else in your box.'

'Desforges!' cried Suzanne; 'you're mad, my dear René--mad! He came into our box during one of the intervals, and my husband made him stay till the piece was over. Desforges!' she repeated with a smile, 'why, he's nobody. I didn't even think of mentioning him. Seriously, you don't mean to say you're jealous of Desforges?'

'You looked so bright and happy,' rejoined René, in a voice that already showed signs of relenting.

'Ungrateful man,' she said; 'I wish you could have read what was going on within me! It is this necessity for continual dissimulation which is the bane of my life; and now, to have you reproach me with it! No, René--this is too cruel, too unjust!'

'Forgive me! Forgive me!' cried the poet, now perfectly convinced by the natural manner of his mistress. 'It is true. Some one has poisoned my mind. It was Colette! How justified you were in your distrust of Claude Larcher!'

'I did not allow him to pay me attentions,' said Suzanne; 'men never forgive that.'

'The wretch!' cried the poet angrily, and then, as if to rid himself of his grief by telling it, he went on: 'He knew that I loved you. How? Because I hesitated and got confused the only time I ever mentioned your name to him. He knows me so well! He guessed my secret and told his mistress all about it--and a lot of other lies. I can't repeat them to you.'

'Tell me, René, tell me,' said Suzanne, wearing at that moment the noble look of resignation that is seen on the faces of those who go to the scaffold innocent. 'Did they say that I had had lovers before you?'

'Would that it were only that!' exclaimed René.

'What then, _mon Dieu?_' she cried. 'What does it matter to me what they said, but that you, René, should believe it! Come, confess, so that you may have nothing on your mind. I have at least the right to demand that.'

'True,' replied the poet, and looking as shamefaced as though he were the guilty one, he stammered rather than pronounced the following words: 'Colette told me she heard from Claude that you were . . . No--I can't say it--well, that Desforges . . .'

'Still Desforges,' said Suzanne, interrupting him with a sweet but ironical smile; 'it is too comical.' She did not want René to formulate the charge that she could now guess. It would have wounded her dignity to descend to such depths. 'You were told that Desforges had been my lover--that he was still so, no doubt. But that is not slander--it is too ridiculous to be that. Poor old friend--he who knew me when I was as high as that!--he and my father were always together. He has seen me grow up, and loves me as if I were his own child. And it is this man whom---- No, René, swear to me that you didn't believe it. Have I deserved that you should think so badly of me?'