She never spoke to me about it, however, but seemed
to recoil from a definite explanation, which might
make shipwreck of her love. She surrounded me
with endearing attentions, and appeared to be trying
to make my life so pleasant to me, that nothing in
the world could draw me from it! And she would
certainly cure me, if this madness of mine, were not,
alas! like those wounds which are constantly reopening,
and which no balm can heal.
But, at times, I lived again, I imagined that her
caresses had exorcised me, that I was saved, that
doubt was no longer gnawing at my heart, that I was
going to adore her again, like I used to adore her.
I used to throw myself at her knees and put my lips
on her little hands which she abandoned to me, I looked
at her lovely, limpid eyes as if they had been a piece
of a blue sky that appeared amidst black storm clouds,
and I whispered, with something like a sob in my throat:
“You love me, do you not, with all your heart;
you love me as much as I love you; tell me so again,
my dear love; tell me that, and nothing but that!”
And she used to reply eagerly, with a smile of joy
on her lips:
“Do you not know it? Do you not see every
moment that I love you, that you have taken entire
possession of me, and that I only live for you and
by you?”
And her kisses gave me new life, and intoxicated me,
like when one returns from a long journey and had
been in peril and is despaired of ever seeing some
beloved object again, and one meets with a sort of
frenzied embrace, and forgets everything in that divine
feeling that one is going to die of happiness....
But these were only ephemeral clear spots in our sky,
and the cries which accompanied them only grew more
bitter and terrible. I knew that Elaine was growing
more and more uneasy at the apparent strangeness of
my character, that she suffered from it and that it
affected her nerves, that the existence to which I
was condemning her in spite of myself, that all this
immoderate love of mine, followed by fits of inexplicable
coldness and of low spirits, disconcerted her, so that
she was no longer the same, and kept away from me.
She could not hide her grief, and was continually
worrying me with questions of affectionate pity.
She repeated the same things over and over again,
with hateful persistence. She had vexed me, without
knowing it! Was I already tired of my married
life, and did I regret my lost liberty? Had I
any private troubles which I had not told her of;
heavy debts which I did not know how to pay; was it
family matters or some former connection with a woman
that I had broken off suddenly, and that now threatened
to create a scandal? Was I being worried by anonymous
letters? What was it, in a word; what was it?
My denials only exasperated her, so that she sulked
in silence, while her brain worked and her heart grew
hard towards me; but could I, as a matter of fact,
tell her of my suspicions which were filling my life
with gloom and annihilating me? Would it not be
odious and vile to accuse her of such a fall, without
any proofs or any clue, and would she ever forget
such an insult?
