No: I know what awaits me. I have felt it now for two years,--this agony of seeing him becoming daily more detached from me. What have Inot done to keep him near me! How I have stooped to meanness, to falsehood, to keep him a single day longer, perhaps a single hour! But all was useless. I was a burden to him. He loved me no longer; and my love became to him a heavier load than the cannon-ball which they will fasten to his chains at the galleys."Dionysia shuddered.
"That is horrible!" she murmured.
"Horrible! Yes, but true. You look amazed. That is because you have as yet only seen the morning dawn of your love: wait for the dark evening, and you will understand me. Is not the story of all of us women the same! I have seen Jacques at my feet as you see him at yours: the vows he swears to you, he once swore to me; and he swore them to me with the same voice, tremulous with passion, and with the same burning glances. But you think you will be his wife, and I never was. What does that matter? What does he tell you? That he will love you forever, because his love is under the protection of God and of men. He told me, precisely because our love was not thus protected, that we should be united by indissoluble bonds,--bonds stronger than all others. You have his promise: so had I. And the proof of it is that I gave him every thing,--my honor and the honor of my family, and that I would have given him still more, if there had been any more to give. And now to be betrayed, forsaken, despised, to sink lower and lower, until at last I must become the object of your pity! To have fallen so low, that you should dare come and offer me to give up Jacques for my benefit! Ah, that is maddening! And I should let the vengeance I hold in my hands slip from me at your bidding! I should be stupid enough, blind enough, to allow myself to be touched by your hypocritical tears! I should secure your happiness by the sacrifice of my reputation! No, madam, cherish no such hope!"Her voice expired in her throat in a kind of toneless rattle. She walked up and down a few times in the room. Then she placed herself straight before Dionysia, and, looking fixedly into her eyes, she asked,--"Who suggested to you this plan of coming here, this supreme insult which you tried to inflict upon me?"Dionysia was seized with unspeakable horror, and hardly found heart to reply.
"No one," she murmured.
"M. Folgat?"
"Knows nothing of it."
"And Jacques?"