CHAPTER XIX

ALL OR NOTHING

The Fresneau family were at dinner when the commissionaire delivered Suzanne's letter. Françoise entered, holding the dainty envelope in her great red hand, and the expression on René's face as he tore it open sufficed to tell Emilie from whom the missive came. She trembled. The sight of her brother's wild despair had emboldened her to refuse admission to the unknown visitor whom she had instinctively recognised as its undoubted cause, the dangerous woman Claude Larcher had spoken of as the most wanton creature living. But to face René's anger and tell him what she had done was beyond her strength, and she postponed the unpleasant step from hour to hour. The look her brother gave her after reading the letter made her drop her eyes and colour to the roots of her hair. Fresneau, who was carving a fowl with rare ability--he had learnt the art, a strange one for him, at his father's table in days gone by--was so struck by the expression on his brother-in-law's face that he sat staring at him with a wing stuck on the point of his fork. Then, being afraid that his wife had noticed his surprise, he broke out into a laugh and tried to excuse his momentary abstraction by saying, 'This knife will cut butter.'

His jocular remark was followed by a silence that lasted until dinner was over--a silence threatening to Emilie, inexplicable to Fresneau, and unperceived by René, who was almost choking and did not eat a mouthful. Hardly had Françoise removed the cloth and placed the tobacco bowl and the decanter of brandy on the table when the poet went off to his room, after having asked the maid to light him a lamp.

'He looks annoyed, doesn't he?' observed the professor.

'Annoyed?' replied Emilie. 'Some idea for his play has probably occurred to him, and he wants to put it into writing at once. But it's a bad thing to work immediately after dinner--I'll go and tell him so.'

Glad to have found some excuse, Emilie went into her brother's room. She found him scribbling a reply to Suzanne's note in the twilight, without even waiting for the lamp. He was no doubt expecting his sister to come in, for he said roughly and in an angry tone; 'Oh, there you are! Some one called to see me to-day, and you said I was out of town?'

'René,' said Emilie, joining her hands, 'forgive me; I thought I was doing right. I was afraid of your seeing this woman in your present state.' Then, finding strength in the ardour of her affection to bare her inmost thoughts, she went on, 'This woman is your evil genius----'

'It seems,' cried the poet, with suppressed rage, 'that you still take me for a child of fifteen. Am I at home here--yes or no?' he shouted, bursting out. 'If I cannot do as I like, say so, and I'll go and live elsewhere. I have had enough of this coddling, you understand. Look after your son and your husband, and let me do as I like.'

He saw his sister standing there before him pale and overcome by the harsh words he had used. He was himself ashamed of his outburst. It was so unjust to make poor Emilie atone for the pain that was gnawing at his heart. But he was not in a mood just then for acknowledging himself in the wrong, and, instead of taking in his arms the woman he had so cruelly wounded in her most sensitive parts, he left the room, closing the door behind him with a bang. He snatched up his hat in the ante-room, and from the place where he had left her, trembling with agitation, Emilie could hear him leave the house.

The worthy Fresneau, who, after listening in amazement to René's excited accents, had also heard the noise of his departure, now entered the room to learn what had happened. He saw his wife standing there in the semi-darkness like one dead. Seizing her hands, he cried, 'What's the matter?' in such an affectionate tone that she flung her arms round his neck and cried out amidst her sobs:

'_Mon ami_--I have no one but you in the world!'

She lay there weeping, with her head on her husband's shoulder, whilst the poor fellow scarcely knew whether to curse or bless his brother-in-law, his despair at his wife's grief and his joy at seeing her fly to him for comfort being equally great.

'Come, come,' he said, 'don't be silly. Tell me what has taken place between you.'

'He has no heart, he has no heart,' was all the answer he could get.

'Nonsense, nonsense!' he replied, adding, with that clear-sightedness which true affection brings to the dullest, 'He knows how much you love him, and he abuses his knowledge--that's all!'

Whilst Fresneau was consoling Emilie as well as he could, though without getting her to divulge the secret of her quarrel with the poet, the latter was striding along the streets a prey to a fresh attack of that grief which had tortured his soul for the past twenty-four hours. Suzanne had been right in thinking that a voice within him would plead against what he knew--against what he had seen. Who that has loved and been betrayed has not heard that voice which reasons against all reason and bids us hope against all hope? Faith has gone for ever, but how pleased we should be to find ourselves again at the stage of doubt! How regretfully we then recall as some happy period the cruel days when suspicion had not yet grown into horrible and unbearable certainty!

René would have purchased with his blood the shadow of the shadow of a doubt, but the more he dwelt upon all the details that had led to his conviction the more firmly did that conviction take root in his heart. 'But if she had been paying a harmless visit?' hazarded the voice of love. Harmless? Would she have concealed her destination from her coachman? Would she have gone out by the other door, thickly veiled, walking straight before her, but looking furtively about her just as she did on leaving him? And then the appearance of Desforges almost immediately after at the other entrance! . . . All the proofs brought forward by Claude occurred to him one after another--the Society rumours, the recent ruin of the Moraines, the post obtained for the husband, the suggestion made to him by Suzanne for purchasing shares, and her lies, now proved to be such. 'What more positive proofs can I have,' he asked himself, 'except one?' And as the terrible vision of Suzanne in the arms of her aged lover rose up before him he closed his eyes in pain. Then came thoughts of her visit to the Rue Coëtlogon and of the letter he had in his pocket. 'And she dares ask to see me? What can she have to say? I will go, as she asks, and take my revenge by insulting her as Claude insults Colette. . . . No,' he continued, 'that would be degrading myself to her level; true revenge consists in ignoring her. I shall not go.'

He wavered between these two decisions, feeling quite powerless to make up his mind, so intense was his longing to see Suzanne once more and so sincere his resolution not to be duped again by her lies. His perplexity became so great that he resolved to go and ask Claude's advice. Now only did he begin to feel some surprise that this faithful friend had not sent to inquire about him in the morning, as he had promised to do.

'I'll go and call on him, although he'll probably not be in,' said René as he bent his steps towards the Rue de Varenne. It was about half-past ten when he rang the ponderous bell of the Sainte-Euverte mansion. There was a light burning in one of the apartments occupied by Claude, who, contrary to René's expectations, was not out. The poet found him in the smoking-room, the first of the small set at the top of the stairs. A lamp with a pink globe shed a soft light round the apartment, the walls of which were adorned with a large piece of tapestry and a copy of the 'Triumph of Death' attributed to Orcagna. In a corner of the room the bluish flame of a spirit lamp was burning under a small tea kettle; this, with the two cups, a decanter of sherry, and some _bouchées au foie gras_ on a china dish were proofs that the occupant of this quiet abode expected a visitor. A bundle of small Russian cigarettes with long mouthpieces--Colette's favourites--plainly revealed to René who that visitor was. He would still have hesitated to believe his own eyes had not Claude, in evident embarrassment, said, with a shamefaced smile:

'After all, it's as well that you should know it--_canis reversus ad vomitum suum._ Yes, I am expecting Colette. She is coming here after the theatre. Do you object to meeting her?'

'Candidly,' replied René, 'I prefer not to see her.'

'And how do matters stand with you?' asked Claude.

After the poet had briefly acquainted him with the present position, the scene at the Opera, Suzanne's visit, and her request for a meeting, Larcher rejoined: 'What can I say to you? Have I the right to advise you, weak as I am myself? But does that really matter? I can see my own follies clearly enough, although I am continually stumbling like a blind man. Why, then, should I not see clearly for you, who have perhaps more energy than I? You are younger, and have never stumbled yet. . . . It comes to this. Have you resolved to become, like me, an erotic maniac, a madman ruled only by sexual passion, and--worse than all--a wretch sensible of his own degradation? Then keep this appointment. Suzanne will give you no reasons, not one. Don't you see that if she were innocent the very sight of you would be hateful to her after what you have said? She came to your house. Why? To blind you once more with her beauty. Now she summons you to the very place where you will be least able to resist that beauty. She will say what women always say in these cases. Words--and words--and words again. But you will see her, you will hear the rustle of her skirts. And, believe me, there is no love-potion so powerful as treachery! You will feel the truth of this when you stifle her with savage and brutish embraces--and then, good-bye to reproaches! Everything is forgotten. But what follows? You saw how brave I was yesterday. See what a coward I am to-day, and say to yourself, like the workman who sees his drunken comrade staggering helplessly along, "That's how I shall be on Sunday!" If, after all, you feel unable to do without her--if you must have her, as the drunkard must have his wine--you will find solace in this cowardice, even though it kill you. That solace I have found. Glut yourself with this woman's love. It will rid you either of your love for her or of your self-respect. You will learn to treat Suzanne exactly as I treat Colette. But remember what I have told you to-night--it is the end of all. Talent I no longer possess. Honour! What should I do with it, having forgiven what I have forgiven? My poor boy,' he concluded in tones of entreaty, 'you can still save yourself. You are at the top of the ladder that leads down to the sewer--listen to the cry of an unhappy wretch who is up to his neck in filth at the bottom. And now, good-bye, if you don't want to see Colette. Why did she tell you what she did? You knew nothing, and where ignorance is bliss---- Good-bye once more, old man. Think of me and pity me!'

'No,' said the poet, as he made his way home, 'I will not descend to such depths.' For the first time perhaps since witnessing Claude's unhappy passion he really understood the nature of his wretched friend's malady. He had just discovered in himself feelings identical to those which had made such an abject slave of Colette's lover--a mingling of utter contempt and ardent physical longing for a woman justly tried and condemned. Yes, in spite of all he had learnt he still desired Suzanne--still desired those lips kissed by Desforges and all that beauty which the hoary libertine had stained but not destroyed. It was that fair white flesh that troubled his senses now--nought but that flesh! To this had come his noble love, his worship of her whom he had once called his Madonna. Claude was right: if he yielded to this base longing but once, all would be lost. His loathing for the slough of corruption in which his friend was helplessly struggling was so intense that it gave him strength to say, 'I pledge myself not to go to the Rue des Dames on Monday,' and he knew he would keep his word.

Whilst Suzanne was undergoing the tortures of hope and despair in the little blue _salon_ on the appointed morning René too was suffering intensely, but it was in his own room. 'I won't go--I won't go!' he muttered repeatedly. Then he thought of his friend, and he sighed 'Poor Claude!' as he fully realised the position of the man who had been beaten in the struggle in which he himself was now engaged. He pitied himself whilst pitying Colette's victim, and this pity, as well as his old and long-continued religious habits, aided his courage. For some time now he had refrained from all observances, and had surrendered himself to those doubts which all modern writers entertain more or less before returning to Christianity as the sole source of spiritual life. But even during the period of doubt the moral muscle, developed by exercise in childhood and youth, continues to put forth its strength. In his resistance to the most pressing calls of passion, the nephew and pupil of the Abbé Taconet once more found this power at his service. When the last stroke of twelve had died away he said to himself, 'Suzanne has gone home--I am saved.'

Saved he was not, and his inability to follow Claude's advice to the letter ought to have convinced him of this. Neither on the Monday nor the following days could he summon up sufficient courage to leave the city that contained the woman from whom he now both wished and thought himself freed. He invented all kinds of shallow pretexts for remaining in Paris. 'I am as far from her in this room as I should be in Rome or Venice; I shall not go to her, and she will not come here.' In reality, he was expecting--he scarce knew what. He only knew that his passion was too intense to die in this way. A meeting would take place between Suzanne and himself. How or where mattered little, but it would certainly take place. He would not confess to this cowardly and secret hope, but it had taken such hold upon him that he remained a prisoner in the Rue Coëtlogon in hourly expectation of receiving another letter or of finding himself the object of some last attempt. No letter came, no attempt was made, and his heart grew heavier within him.

At times this desire to see Suzanne once more--a desire he felt, but would not admit--drove him to his writing-table, where he would sit and indite page after page of the wildest sentiment to the abandoned creature. His pent-up rage found vent in the mad lines in which he both insulted and idolised her, and in which terms of endearment mingled with words of hatred. Then Claude's piteous laments would re-echo in his ears, and he would tear up the paper as he stifled an answering wail that rose within him. He lay down at night with despair in his heart, thinking of death as the only thing to be desired. He rose, and his thoughts were unchanged. The bright days, so glorious in the budding time of Nature, were to him intolerable, and his poetic soul longed for the twilight hour and the darkness that matched so well the black night in his heart. In the gloaming, too, he could find sweet solace in tears. It was the hour that his poor sister feared most for him. They had become reconciled on the very next day after their quarrel.

'Are you still angry with me?' she had asked him, with that gentleness of voice that betokens true affection.

'No,' he replied; 'I was entirely in the wrong; but, unless you wish to see me act so unjustly again, I entreat you never to re-open that subject.'

'Never,' she said, and she kept her word. Meanwhile she saw her brother wasting away, his cheeks growing still thinner and a fierce light that frightened her burning in his sunken eyes. It was for this reason, then, that she generally chose the dangerous hour of twilight to come and sit with him. One day Fresneau had gone to take Constant for a walk in the Luxembourg; she herself had found some pretext for staying at home. She took her darling brother's hand in hers, and this dumb caress made the unhappy fellow feel inexpressibly sad. He returned her pressure without a word, her benign and soothing influence controlling him until thoughts of Desforges suddenly flashed across his brain. 'Leave me,' he said to Emilie, and she obeyed him in the hope of easing his pain. As soon as she was gone he buried his head in the pillows of the bed whilst jealousy gripped his heart with relentless claws. Ah! the agony of it!

How many days had he spent in this fashion? Scarcely seven, but in his present sufferings they appeared to him an eternity. Looking at the almanac on the morning of the eighth day, he saw that May was drawing to an end. Although the pilgrimage he contemplated inspired him with horror, the bourgeois habits of regularity that had animated him throughout his life induced him to turn his steps once more towards the Rue des Dames. There was the landlady's bill to be paid and notice of leaving to be given her. He chose the afternoon for his visit, so as to be sure of not meeting Suzanne. 'Just as if she had not already forgotten me,' he said to himself. What were his feelings on finding not only her handkerchief and gloves, but next to them a note she had left there on a second visit addressed to 'M. d'Albert!' He tore it open, but his hands shook so terribly that it took him quite five minutes to read the few sentences it contained, many of the words, too, being half effaced by tears.

'I came back once more, my love! From the shrine of our passion, and in the name of the memories it must contain for you as well as for me, I entreat you to see me once again. Darling--will you not think of me here without those horrible flashes of hatred I have seen in your eyes? Remember what proofs of affection I have given you on the spot where you are reading these lines. No! I cannot live if you doubt what is the one, the only great truth of my life. I repeat once more that I am not angry nor indignant--I am in despair; if you do not believe me it is because, with my heart full of love and pain, I cannot stoop to artifice to make you believe anything. Good-bye, my love! How often have I repeated these words on the threshold of this room! And then I would add--_Au revoir!_ But I suppose it must really be good-bye now, both on my lips and in my heart--can it be good-bye for ever?'

'Good-bye, my love!' repeated René, trying in vain to steel his heart. The simple, loving words, the sight of the room, the thought that Suzanne had come here without the hope of seeing him, and merely as a pilgrim to the shrine of their past love--all contributed to work him up to a pitch of frenzy, which he did his best to withstand. 'Her love!' he cried, with a sudden outburst of fury, 'and she went to another--for money! What a coward I am!' To escape the painful feelings he could not banish he left the room hurriedly and rang Madame Raulet's bell. The fair-spoken and accommodating landlady soon made her appearance, and led the way into her own little parlour, furnished with the remaining articles she could not get into the other. On his telling her that he was giving up the apartments her face showed signs of real annoyance.

'The bill is not quite ready,' she said.

'I am in no hurry,' replied René, and, fearing a fresh attack of despair if he returned to the room he had left, he added, 'I'll wait here, if you don't mind.'

Although he was in no observant mood, he could not help noticing that in the twenty minutes she kept him waiting Madame Raulet had found time to change her dress. Instead of the striped cotton wrapper in which she had received him, she now wore a becoming evening dress of black grenadine. The corsage consisted of bands of stuff alternating with lace insertions, through which might be seen the fair neck and shoulders of the coquettish widow. There was a brighter look in her eyes and a more vivid colour in her cheeks than usual, and, laying the bill on the table, she said:

'Excuse me for having kept you waiting. I didn't feel very well. I have such palpitations of the heart--feel!' Taking René's hand with a smile that would not have deceived the simplest soul living, she placed it on the spot where her heart should have been.

She had suspected the rupture between the pseudo-d'Albert and his mistress by the two solitary visits of Madame Moraines. The fact of René giving up the apartments proved her suspicions to be correct, and an idea of taking advantage of the rupture had suddenly entered her head, either because the poet with his manly beauty really pleased her or because she had an eye to pecuniary considerations she could not afford to despise. She was by no means old and thought herself very attractive. But on looking at her lodger as she carried his hand to her side she saw in his eyes a look of such cool contempt and disgust that she immediately loosed her hold of his fingers. She took up the bill, the writing in which showed that it had been prudently made out beforehand, and tried to cover her confusion by entering into profuse explanations of this or that item in a highly inflated account which the poet did not even stoop to verify. He handed her the sum he owed her, half in paper, half in gold. The humiliating defeat of her amorous attempt had not deprived her wits of their sharpness, for she examined the notes by holding each one up to the light, and looked closely at each of the gold pieces as she counted them. She even sounded one of the coins that seemed a little light in weight, and, after a moment's hesitation, said: 'I must ask you to let me have another for this.'

The impressions produced by this shamelessness and sordid greed were so well in keeping with the rest of René's feelings that during the quarter of an hour it took him to carry the few things he had in the three rooms to his cab he--to use the apt and expressive words of a humourist--'was as merry as a mute going to his own funeral.' As the old 'growler' jolted along over the stones, carrying in its musty-smelling interior the emblems of his happiness, his cruel merriment changed to a fit of most abject melancholy. He recognised every inch of the way he had so often trodden in the ecstasy of love, and which he would never tread again. Dark and lowering clouds hung over the city. Since the preceding evening there had been one of those unexpected returns of winter to which Paris is frequently exposed about the middle of spring, and which nip the young verdure with frost. As the cab crossed the Seine, flowing darkly and drearily along, the unhappy man looked down into the water and thought, 'How easy it would be to end it all!'

After this movement of despair he felt in his pocket for Suzanne's letter, as if to convince himself of the reality of his grief. He also took out her handkerchief and inhaled its perfume--for some time; then he gazed at her gloves, and saw in them the shape of the fingers he had loved so well. He felt that he had exhausted all his energy in resisting temptation, and as soon as he was alone in his room after this fresh and painful crisis he cried aloud, 'I cannot bear it any longer!'

Calmly, almost mechanically, he opened a drawer and took out of a leather case a small revolver his sister had given him to carry in his pocket when coming home late from the theatre. It was not loaded, and, taking out a packet of cartridges, he weighed one in the palm of his hand. Poor human machine, how little is required to bring you to a standstill! He loaded the revolver and unbuttoned his shirt; then, feeling for the place where his heart throbbed within him, he pressed the barrel against it.

'No,' he said, in a firm tone, 'not before I have tried.'

These words were the outcome of an idea which had repeatedly entered his mind, and which, repeatedly rejected as a crazy one, now took shape and form with the precision our thoughts assume in moments of important action. He put the revolver back in the drawer, and sitting down in his arm-chair--Suzanne's arm-chair--he plunged into that abyss of tragic thought in which visions stand out in bold relief, arguments follow on each other with lightning rapidity, and desperate resolutions are adopted. 'My love!' he repeated to himself, remembering the words of Suzanne's letter. Yes, in spite of her lies, in spite of the play she had acted--the innumerable scenes of which now passed through his mind--in spite of her base connection with Desforges, she had truly and passionately loved him. If that love were not sincere, then the story of the past few months was perfectly unintelligible! What other motive could have thrown her into his arms? It could not have been an interested one. He was so poor, so humble, so utterly beneath her. Neither was it the glory of enslaving a fashionable author, for she had herself begged that their relations should be kept a secret. It could not be vanity, for she had not stolen him from any rival, nor had she held out long to give her conquest more value. No--monstrous as that love might be, mingled as it was with corruption and deceit, there was no doubt that she had loved him and that she loved him still. That soul whose moral leprosy had struck him with horror was yet capable of some kind of sincerity. There was still something within this woman better than her life, better than her actions. René at length consented to listen to the voice which pleaded for his mistress, and calmly and dispassionately did he now weigh the crime of venality that had at first so disgusted him.

His visits to the Komof mansion and his intimate relations with Suzanne had opened his eyes to a new world and initiated him into the mysteries of the highest forms of luxury and refinement. The false notions of high life which the unsophisticated _bourgeois_ poet had at first entertained were soon dispelled by a more correct idea of the frightful extravagance which fashionable existence in Paris involves. Now, whilst his love was struggling for life and attempting to justify Suzanne, or at least to understand her, to discover in her something to save her from utter contempt, he began to see, thanks to his truer knowledge of the world, the tragedy in which this woman had played a leading part. Claude had summed up the situation briefly in these words: 'Seven years ago the Moraines were ruined.' Ruined! That word was now synonymous in René's ears with all the privation and humiliation it generally brings. Suzanne had been brought up in luxury to lead a life of luxury. It was as necessary to her as the air she breathed. Her husband had no doubt been the first to urge her to adopt her sinful expedient--so at least did the poet continue to judge poor Paul. Desforges had presented himself, and she had sinned, but not from love. When at length love did come to her could she break her chains? Yes--she could, by proposing to him, René, that each should give up all that bound them here, and that they two should go and live together for ever!

'Give up all! . . . They two! . . . Live together!' He caught himself uttering these words as in a dream. Was it too late? What if he went to Suzanne now and offered to sacrifice all to their love, to wipe out all the past except that love, and to bind up and identify with it their whole being, their whole present, their whole future? What if he said: 'You swear that you love me, that this love is the one and only truth in your heart. Prove it. You have no children, you are free. Take my life and give me yours. Go with me, and I will forgive you and believe in you. . . . I am going mad,' he said, suddenly bringing his mind to a standstill as this idea presented itself so clearly that he could actually see Suzanne listening to him. Mad? But why? The stories he had read in his youth about the redemption of fallen women by love--an idea of such sublime conception that it has attracted the greatest writers--came back to him. Balzac's Esther, the most divine character of an amorous courtesan ever painted, had often figured in his dreams of long ago, and natures like his, in which literary impressions precede those of life itself, never altogether lose the impress of such dreams.

He loved Suzanne, and Suzanne loved him. Why should he not attempt to save her, in the name of that sublime passion, from the infamy that covered her, and try to drag himself away from the dark abyss of death towards which he felt drawn? Why should he not offer her this unique opportunity of repairing the hideous wretchedness of her fate? But she--what answer would she make? 'I shall know then whether she loves me,' continued René. 'Yes--if she loves me, how eagerly will she seize this means of escaping from the horrible luxury to which she is chained! And if she says no?' A thrill of terror shot through him at the thought. 'It will be time enough to act then,' he concluded.

The whirlwind of passion let loose by the sudden conception of this plan raged for nearly three hours. As his thoughts swayed hither and thither the poet seemed unconscious of the fact that his mind was already made up, and that the fluctuations only served to disguise from him the one feeling that dominated all the rest--a furious longing, amounting almost to a necessity, to have his mistress back. Even had this plan of elopement been more irrational, more impracticable, and less likely to succeed, he would have taken it up as the most reasonable, the easiest, and most certain of success, simply because it was the only one that reconciled the irrepressible ardour of his love with that dignity his still unsullied honour would never compromise.

'To action,' he said at last. He sat down to his table and wrote Suzanne a note in which he asked her to be at home the next day at two o'clock. He took the letter to the post himself, and immediately experienced that relief which invariably follows upon some definite resolve. He who for a whole week, and ever since his first wild fit of grief, had felt himself unable to put forth the least energy, and incapable even of opening the manuscript of his 'Savonarola,' at once set about preparing everything, as if there could be no doubt what Suzanne's reply would be. He counted out the money he had in his drawer; there was a little over five thousand francs. That would suffice for the initial expenses. And afterwards? He made a calculation of the amount to which he was entitled out of the patrimony that had never been divided between Emilie and himself. The great thing was to get over the first two years, during which he would finish his play and have it staged. Immediately after that he would publish his novel, which the success of his piece would help on, just as one wave sweeps on another, and then would come his collection of poems. A boundless horizon of work and of triumph seemed to lie before him. Of what efforts would he not be capable, sustained by the divine elixir of happiness and by the desire to provide Suzanne with that luxury she would have sacrificed for him? When his sister entered his room she surprised him arranging his papers, putting his books in order, and sorting some prints.

'What are you doing?' she asked.

'You can see that,' he replied, 'I'm getting ready to go.'

'To go!'

'Yes,' he rejoined; 'I think of going to Italy.'

'When?' asked Emilie in astonishment.

'Most probably the day after to-morrow.'

He meant what he said. He had calculated that Suzanne would require about twenty-four hours for her preparations if she decided to go. If she decided to go! The mere possibility of his attempt failing caused him such pain that he did not care to dwell upon it. Since the scene at the Opera, when he had left her pale and crushed in the semi-darkness of the private box, he had imposed almost superhuman restraint upon himself by stemming the torrent of passionate longing within him. The hope so suddenly conceived was a kind of breach through which the torrent swept with such unrestrained and violent fury that it overturned and carried away all before it. In his madness René even went so far as to look at some trunks in two or three shops in the Rue de la Paix. Since the departure from Vouziers no one in the Vincy family had left Paris, even for twenty-four hours. The only articles in the Rue Coëtlogon that could hold anything were two old worm-eaten coffers and three leather portmanteaus falling to pieces from age. These preparations, which lent an appearance of reality to the poet's dreams, cheated the fever of suspense until the hour of his appointment. The illusion in which he had indulged had been so strong that he did not realise his actual position until he stood in the little _salon_ in the Rue Murillo. Nothing had yet been achieved.

'Madame will be here in a moment,' the servant had said, leaving him alone in the room. He had not been there since the day when he read his choicest verses to her whom he then regarded as a Madonna. Why did she keep him waiting for full five minutes in this place that must awaken in him so many recollections? Was it yet another ruse on her part? Recollections did indeed rise up before him, but produced an effect totally different from that anticipated by Suzanne. The elegance of these surroundings, once so much admired, now inspired him with horror. An atmosphere of infamy seemed to hang over all these objects, many of which had no doubt been paid for by Desforges. The horror he felt intensified his desire to drag the woman he loved away from her misery, and when she appeared on the threshold it was not love that she read in his eyes, but a fixed and determined look of resolve.

What resolve? Of the two she was undoubtedly the most agitated and least under control. Her long white lace robe lent a sickly hue to her face, already drawn and haggard by the trouble she had lately undergone. There had been no necessity for her to pencil her eyes--a custom practised by actresses of the drawing-room as well as by those of the stage--nor of studying the movement with which, at sight of René, she brought her hand to her heart and leant against the wall for support. At the first glance she saw that she had a hard battle to fight, and she feared the result. There fell upon the two lovers one of those spells of silence so awful in their solemnity that in them we seem to hear the flight of destiny!

The silence became unbearable to the unhappy woman, and she broke it by saying in a low tone, 'René, how you have made me suffer!' Then, rushing forward in her mad state of agitation, she took hold of his two hands, and, throwing herself upon him, sought his lips for a kiss. But he had the strength to shake her off.

'No,' he said, 'I won't.'

Wringing her hands, she cried in distress, 'Then you still believe in those vile suspicions! You did not come, and you condemned me unheard! What proofs had you? That you saw me leave a certain house! Not a single doubt in my favour--not one out of twenty suppositions that might have pleaded for me! What if I tell you that a friend of mine living in that house was ill, and that I had been to call on her? What if I tell you that the presence of the other person whose sight drove you mad was due to the same cause? Shall I swear it by all I hold most sacred, by----'

'Don't swear,' exclaimed René in harsh tones, 'I shouldn't believe you--I don't believe you.'

'He does not believe me even now--my God! What shall I do?' She paced up and down the room, repeating, What shall I do? What shall I do?'

During the whole of that week she had been tormented by the thought that he might be so thoroughly exasperated as not to believe her. If but a single suspicion were left him she was lost. He would follow her again or have her watched. He would know that she met Desforges every time she visited her imaginary friend, and the whole thing would begin over again. What, then, was the use of going on with her lies? She had had enough of it all. Now that her heart was stirred by the sincerest of passions she felt a desire to tell her lover the truth--the whole truth, and, while telling him, to convince him of the depth of her love. He must be made to hear the cry that came from her heart, and made to believe it.

Almost beside herself, she commenced her story.

'It is true--I lied to you. You want to know all--you shall know all.'

She stopped for a moment and passed her hands wildly over her face. No, no! She felt incapable of making this confession. He would despise her; and inventing, as she went on, a kind of incoherent compromise between her desire to unbosom herself and the fear of repelling René, she began again.

'It is a horrible story. My father died. There were letters to get back with which his enemies might have blackened his memory. This required money--a good deal. I had none. My husband stood aloof. Then this man came. I lost my head, and once he had me in his grasp he would not let me go. Ah! can you not understand that I lied only to keep you?'

René had been watching her as these hurried words fell from her lips. The story of rescuing her father's honour he knew to be a fresh lie, but her last cry, uttered with almost savage ardour, had the ring of truth in it What mattered to him all the rest? He would know by her answer whether this love, the only sincerity to which she now laid claim, was strong enough to triumph over all else.

'So much the better!' he replied. 'Yes, so much the better if you are the slave of a wretched past that weighs you down! So much the better if your subjection to this man causes you such horror! You say that you have loved me--that you still love me, and that you lied only to keep me? I now, offer you an opportunity of giving me such proofs of that love as will put an end to all my doubts.

'I ask you to efface the past for ever and with one stroke. I too love you, Suzanne--ah! how tenderly! Do not ask me what my feelings were on learning what I have learnt, on seeing what I have seen. If it has not killed me, it is because we do not die of despair. I am ready to forgive all, to forget all, provided I know of a certainty that you really love me. I am free, and, since you have no children, you too are free. I am ready to give up everything for you, and I have come to ask you whether you are ready to do the same. We will go wherever you like--to Italy, to England, to any country where we shall be sure of finding no traces of your past life. That past I will blot out; my belief in your love will give me strength to do this. I shall say to myself: "She did not know me; but as soon as I bared my heart there was nothing that could withstand her love." To accept the present horrible state of things is impossible. To see you coming to me stained by this man's caresses--or even, if you should break with him, to doubt the reality of the rupture, and to reassume the degrading _rôle_ of a spy I have already played--no, Suzanne, do not ask it of me! We have reached that point when we must be all or nothing to each other--either absolute strangers or lovers who find in their love compensation for the loss of family, country, and the whole world. It is for you to choose.'

He had spoken with the concentrated energy of a man who has sworn to carry out what he has in his mind. Mad as the proposal seemed in the eyes of a woman accustomed only to such forms of passion as are compatible with the laws and usages of social life, Suzanne did not hesitate for a moment. René had spoken in all sincerity, but in doing so had given proofs of such deep-rooted affection that she had no doubt as to her final triumph over the rebellious and mad schemes of the poet.

'How good you are to talk to me like that!' she replied with a thrill of joy. 'How you love me! How you love me!' In uttering these words she hung her head a little, as if the happiness brought her by these proofs were almost too much to bear. 'God! how sweet this is!' she murmured.

Then, approaching him once more, she took his hand, almost timidly this time, and held it tightly clasped in her own.

'Child that you are, what is it you offer me? If it were only a question touching myself, how gladly I would say, "Take all my life," and deserve little praise for doing so! But how can I accept the sacrifice of yours? You are twenty-five years old and I am more than thirty. Close your eyes, and look at us in ten years' time. I shall be an old woman, whilst you will still be a young man. What then? And what about your work--that art to which you are so attached that it makes me quite jealous? Why should I hide it from you now? You must be in Paris to be able to write. I should see you pining away beside me. I should see you, an unwilling slave, bestowing affection upon me out of pity and from a sense of duty. No--I could not bear it! My love, lay aside this mad plan and say that you forgive me without it--say it, René, I implore you!'

Whilst speaking she had nestled closer to the poet, and now hung her arms about his neck, seeking his lips with hers. An intense desire to fold her in his arms came over him, but it was drowned in the disgust he felt at her lasciviousness.

Seizing her by the wrist, he flung her from him, shouting in his fury, 'Then you refuse to come--tell me once more you refuse to come!'

'René, I entreat you,' she went on, with tears in her voice and in her eyes, 'do not cast me off! Since we love each other, let us be happy. Take me as I am, with all the wretchedness of my life. It is true--I love luxury, I love gaiety, I love the Paris you hate. I shall never have the courage to break my bonds and give all this up. Take me for what I am, now that you know all, now that you feel I am speaking the truth when I swear I love you as I have never loved before. Keep me! I will be your slave, your thing! When you call me, I will come. When you drive me away, I will go. Do not look at me with such eyes, I implore you--let your heart be softened! When you came to me, did I ask you whether you had another mistress? No; I had but one wish--to make you happy. Can you reproach me for having kept all the misery of my life from you? Look at me--I kneel before you and beseech you----'

She had, indeed, thrown herself at his feet. She took no heed of prudence now, nor of the possibility of a servant entering the room. Clinging to his garments, she dragged herself about on her knees. Never had she looked so beautiful as when, with eyes aglow and her face burning with all the fire of passion, she at length laid aside the mask and proclaimed herself the sublime courtesan she had always been. René's senses were in a state of wild commotion, but a cruel reminiscence flashed across his brain, and he flung his words at her with an insulting sneer--

'And what about Desforges?'

'Don't speak of him,' she moaned, 'don't think of him! If I could get rid of him or forbid him the house, do you think I should hesitate? Don't you understand what a hold he has upon me? My God! My God! It is not right to torture a woman like this! No,' she added, in a dull, despairing tone, still on her knees, but now immovable and with hanging head, 'no, I can bear it no longer!'

'Then accept my offer,' said René; 'there is still time. Let us fly together.'

'No,' she replied, in accents of still greater despair, 'no; I can't do that either. It would be so easy to make a promise and break it. But I have already lied too much.' She rose. The crisis through which she had passed was beginning to react upon her nerves, and she repeated wearily, 'I can't do that either--I can't.'

'What, then, do you want?' he cried in tones of fury. 'Why were you on your knees just now? A toy--a plaything--is that what you want me to be? A young man whose caresses would compensate you for those of the _other!_' His anger carried him away, and the brutal words almost led to deeds. He strode towards her with uplifted fist and with an expression so terrible that she thought he was going to kill her. She drew back, pale with fear, and with outstretched hands.

'Forgive me, forgive me!' she cried in her distraction. 'Don't hurt me!'

She had taken shelter behind a table upon which, amongst other trifles, there stood the photograph of the Baron in a plush frame. In struggling with the horrible temptation to strike this defenceless woman René had turned his eyes from her. As they fell upon the portrait he broke out into a hideous laugh. Taking up the frame, he seized Suzanne by the hair and rubbed the portrait violently over her lips and face, at the risk of cutting her, continuing his frantic laughter all the time.

'Here,' he cried, 'here is your lover! Look at him--your lover!'

He threw the frame upon the floor, and crushed it with his heel. But no sooner had he committed this mad action than he was ashamed of it. For the last time he looked at Suzanne as, with dishevelled hair and staring eyes, she stood in a corner overcome with fear--then without a word he left the room, and she had not the strength to utter a syllable to retain him.