Paul Bourget - A LOVE CRIME

she could not sacrifice to him whom she loved--free to offer this man

not a clandestine interview but a flight together, a complete sacrifice

of her entire life.

All these thoughts came and went in her poor head while she herself was

walking to and fro in the room. She looked again at her lover. She

fancied she could see a change come over the features of the countenance

she idolised.

"Armand," she resumed, "do not be sad. I consent to all that you wish."

These words, which were uttered in the deep voice of a woman probing to

the inmost chamber of her heart, appeared to astonish the young man even

more than they moved him. He wrapped Helen in his strange gaze. If the

poor woman had had strength enough to observe him she would not have

encountered in those keen eyes the divine emotion which atones for the

guilt of the mistress by the happiness of the lover. It was just the

same gaze, at once contemptuous and inquisitive, with which he had

lately contemplated the group formed by Alfred and Helen. But the latter

was too much confused by what she had just said to keep cool enough for

observing anything.

Then, as she had come back and was crouching on Armand's knees, and

pressing against his breast, a fresh expression, that, namely, of almost

intoxicated desire, was depicted on the young man's face. He felt close

to him the beauty of this yielding body, he held in his arms those

charming shoulders of which he had knowledge from having seen them in

the ball-room, he drank in that indefinable aroma which lingers about

every woman, and he pressed his lips upon those eyelids, which he could

feel quivering beneath his kiss.

"You will at least be happy?" she asked him in a sort of anguish between

two caresses.

"What a question! Why, you have never looked at yourself," he said, and

he began to extol to her all the exquisiteness of her face. "You have

never looked at your eyes"--and he again drew his lips across

them--"your pink cheek"--and he stroked it with his hand--"your soft

hair"--and he inhaled it like a flower--"your sweet mouth"--and he laid

his own upon it.

What answer could she have given to this worship of her beauty? She lent

herself to it with a half-frightened smile, surrendering to these

endearments and to these words as to music. They caused something so

deep and withal so vague to vibrate throughout her being that she came

forth half crushed from these embraces, like one dead. It was not for

the first time that she was thus abandoning herself to Armand's kisses.

But no matter how sweet, how intoxicating these kisses, which she found

it impossible to resist, she had on each occasion been strong enough to

escape from bolder caresses.

No, never, never would she have consented, even had there existed no

danger of a surprise, to yield thus in the little drawing-room, where

the portraits of her mother, her husband, and her son reminded her of

what she was nevertheless ready to sacrifice. Ah! not like that! And

again at this moment, when she saw on Armand's face a certain expression

of which she had so deep a dread, she found courage to escape, seated

herself once more in another easy chair, and opening and shutting a fan

which she had taken up in her quivering hands, replied:

"I will be yours to-morrow, if you wish."

Armand seemed to rouse himself from the sweep of passion in which he had

just been tossing. He looked at her, and she again experienced the

sensation which had already caused her so much pain, and which was that

of a veil drawn suddenly between herself and him. Yet, what could she

have said to displease him? She thought that he was wounded by the fact

of her shrinking from him, for was not the uttering of the words that

she had just uttered equivalent to giving herself to him beforehand, and

how could he be vexed with her for desiring that their happiness might

have another setting than that of her every-day life? But he had already

answered her by the following question:

"Where would you like me to meet you? At my own house? I can send away

my servant for the whole of the afternoon."

"Oh, no!" she replied hastily, "not at your own home."

The vision had just come to her that other women had visited Armand,

those other women whom a new mistress always finds between herself and

the man she loves, like the menace of a fatal comparison, like an

anticipated discrediting of her own caresses, since love is always

similar to itself; in its outward forms.

"At least," she thought to herself, "let it not be amid the same

furniture."

"Would you like me to request one of my friends to lend me his rooms?"

Armand asked.

She shook her head as she had done just before. She could hear by

anticipation the conversation of the two men. She was a woman, and

hitherto had been a virtuous one. She was only too well aware that the

manner in which she regarded her own love would have little resemblance

to that of the unknown friend to whom Armand would apply. In her own

eyes passion sanctified everything, even the worst errors; spiritualised

everything, even the most vehement voluptuousness. But he, this

stranger, what would he see in the affair but an intrigue to afford

matter for jesting. A shudder shook her, and she looked again at Armand.

Ah! how her lover's thoughts would have horrified her had she been able

to read them. It was very far from being De Querne's first affair of the

sort, nor did he believe that it was a first act of weakness on her

part. She had, indeed, told him that he was her first lover, and it was

true.

But what proof could be given of the truth of such vows? The young man

had himself deceived and been deceived too often for distrust not to be

the most natural of his feelings. He had provoked this odious discussion

concerning their place of meeting only for the purpose of studying in

Helen's replies the traces left by the amorous experiences through which

she had passed, and mere curiosity led him to dwell upon a subject which

at that moment was stifling the young woman with shame. The scruples

that she displayed about not yielding to him in her own house seemed to

him a calculation due to voluptuousness; those about not yielding to him

at his house, a calculation due to prudence. When she refused to go to

the rooms of a friend: "She is afraid of my confiding in some one," he

said to himself, "but what does she want?"

"Suppose I furnished a little suite of rooms?" he said.

She shook her head, though this had been her secret dream, but she was

afraid that he would see in her acceptance nothing but a desire to gain

time, and then--the necessity, if their meetings occurred always in the

same place, of enduring the notice of the people of the house, the

thought of being the veiled lady whose arrival is watched! Nevertheless,

although such a contrivance also involved a question of outlay which

horrified her, she would have consented to it had she not had another

feeling, the only one which, shaking her head with its rising fever, she

uttered aloud.

"Do not misjudge me, Armand; rather understand me. I should like to be

yours in a place of which nothing would remain afterwards. What would

become of the rooms you furnished for me if ever you ceased to love me?

Why, I cannot endure the thought of it, even now. Do not wrong me, dear;

only understand me."

Thus did she speak, laying bare the profoundly romantic side of her