“Voyons! Do you mean to tell me that a
woman young, pretty, sentimental, neglected, wronged
if you will—? I see you don’t believe
it. Believe simply in your own opportunity!”
she went on. “But for heaven’s sake,
if it is to lead anywhere, don’t come back with
that visage de croquemort. You look as if you
were going to bury your heart—not to offer
it to a pretty woman. You’re much better
when you smile—you’re very nice then.
Come, do yourself justice.”
He remained a moment face to face with her, but his
expression didn’t change. “I shall
do myself justice,” he however after an instant
made answer; and abruptly, with a bow, he took his
departure.
He felt, when he found himself unobserved and outside,
that he must plunge into violent action, walk fast
and far and defer the opportunity for thought.
He strode away into the forest, swinging his cane,
throwing back his head, casting his eyes into verdurous
vistas and following the road without a purpose.
He felt immensely excited, but could have given no
straight name to his agitation. It was a joy as
all increase of freedom is joyous; something seemed
to have been cleared out of his path and his destiny
to have rounded a cape and brought him into sight of
an open sea. But it was a pain in the degree
in which his freedom somehow resolved itself into
the need of despising all mankind with a single exception;
and the fact that Madame de Mauves inhabited a planet
contaminated by the presence of the baser multitude
kept elation from seeming a pledge of ideal bliss.
There she was, at any rate, and circumstances now
forced them to be intimate. She had ceased to
have what men call a secret for him, and this fact
itself brought with it a sort of rapture. He had
no prevision that he should “profit,”
in the vulgar sense, by the extraordinary position
into which they had been thrown; it might be but a
cruel trick of destiny to make hope a harsher mockery
and renunciation a keener suffering. But above
all this rose the conviction that she could do nothing
that wouldn’t quicken his attachment. It
was this conviction that gross accident—all
odious in itself—would force the beauty
of her character into more perfect relief for him
that made him stride along as if he were celebrating
a spiritual feast. He rambled at hazard for a
couple of hours, finding at last that he had left the
forest behind him and had wandered into an unfamiliar
region. It was a perfectly rural scene, and the
still summer day gave it a charm for which its meagre
elements but half accounted.
