I did not choose to wait until she woke up, I sprang
from the bed, where Elaine was still sleeping, with
her disheveled hair lying on the lace-edged pillows.
Her complexion was almost transparent, her lips were
half open, as if she were dreaming, and she seemed
so overcome with sleep, that I felt much emotion when
I looked at her.
I drank four glasses of mild champagne, one after
the other, as quickly as I could, but it did not quench
my thirst. I was feverish and would have given
anything in the world for something to interest me
suddenly and have absorbed me and lifted me out of
that slough in which my heart and my brain were being
engulfed, as if in a quicksand. I did not venture
to avow to myself what was making me so dejected, what
was torturing me and driving me mad with grief, or
to scrutinize the muddy bottom of my present thoughts
sincerely and courageously, to question myself and
to pull myself together.
It would have been so odious, so infamous, to harbor
such suspicions unjustly, to accuse that adorable
creature who was not yet twenty, whom I loved, and
who seemed to love me, without having certain
proofs, that I felt that I was blushing at the idea
that I had any doubt of her innocence. Ah!
Why did I marry?
I had a sufficient income to enable me to live as
I liked, to pay beautiful women who pleased me, whom
I chanced to meet, and who amused me, and who sometimes
gave me unexpected proofs of affection, but I had
never allowed myself to be caught altogether, and in
order to keep my heart warm, I had some romantic and
sentimental friendships with women in society, some
of those delightful flirtations which have an appearance
of love, which fill up the idleness of a useless life
with a number of unexpected sensations, with small
duties and vague subtle pleasures!
And was I now going to be like one of those ships
which an unskillful turn of the helm runs ashore as
it is leaving the harbor? What terrible trials
were awaiting me, what sorrows and what struggles?
A chaffing friend said to me one night in joke at
the club, when I had just broken one of those banks,
which form an epoch in a player’s life:
“If I were in your place, Jacques, I should
distrust such runs of luck as that, for one always
has to pay for them sooner or later!”
Sooner or later!
I half opened the bedroom door gently. Elaine
was in one of those heavy sleeps that follow intoxication.
Who could tell whether, when she opened her eyes and
called me, surprised at not finding herself in my arms,
her whole being would not become languid, and suddenly
sink into a state of prostration? I wanted to
reason with myself, and bring myself face to face
with those cursed suggestions, as one does with a skittish
horse before some object that frightens it, and to
evoke the recollection of every hour, every minute
of that first night of love, and to extract the secret
from her....
