"It must be,"he said,after a moment's silence,"one of those frivolous fears,those hazy suspicions which women dwell on more than they do on the great things of life.You all have a way of tipping the world sideways with a straw,a cobweb--""Sarca**!"she said,"I might have expected it!""Marie,my angel,I only said those words to wring your secret out of you.""My secret would be always a secret,even if I told it to you.""But all the same,tell it to me."
"I am not loved,"she said,giving him one of those sly oblique glances with which women question so maliciously the men they are trying to torment.
"Not loved!"cried Nathan.
"No;you are too occupied with other things.What am I to you in the midst of them?forgotten on the least occasion!Yesterday I came to the Bois and you were not here--""But--"
"I had put on a new dress expressly to please you;you did not come;where were you?"
"But--"
"I did not know where.I went to Madame d'Espard's;you were not there.""But--"
"That evening at the Opera,I watched the balcony;every time a door opened my heart was beating!""But--"
"What an evening I had!You don't reflect on such tempests of the heart.""But--"
"Life is shortened by such emotions."
"But--"
"Well,what?"she said.
"You are right;life is shortened by them,"said Nathan,"and in a few months you will utterly have consumed mine.Your unreasonable reproaches drag my secret from me--Ha!you say you are not loved;you are loved too well."And thereupon he vividly depicted his position,told of his sleepless nights,his duties at certain hours,the absolute necessity of succeeding in his enterprise,the insatiable requirements of a newspaper in which he was required to judge the events of the whole world without blundering,under pain of losing his power,and so losing all,the infinite amount of rapid study he was forced to give to questions which passed as rapidly as clouds in this all-consuming age,etc.,etc.
Raoul made a great mistake.The Marquise d'Espard had said to him on one occasion,"Nothing is more ***** than a first love."As he unfolded before Marie's eyes this life which seemed to her immense,the countess was overcome with admiration.She had thought Nathan grand,she now considered him sublime.She blamed herself for loving him too much;begged him to come to her only when he could do so without difficulty.Wait?indeed she could wait!In future,she should know how to sacrifice her enjoyments.Wishing to be his stepping-stone was she really an obstacle?She wept with despair.
"Women,"she said,with tears in her eyes,"can only love;men act;they have a thousand ways in which they are bound to act.But we can only think,and pray,and worship."A love that had sacrificed so much for her sake deserved a recompense.
She looked about her like a nightingale descending from a leafy covert to drink at a spring,to see if she were alone in the solitude,if the silence hid no witness;then she raised her head to Raoul,who bent his own,and let him take one kiss,the first and the only one that she ever gave in secret,feeling happier at that moment than she had felt in five years.Raoul thought all his toils well-paid.They both walked forward they scarcely knew where,but it was on the road to Auteuil;presently,however,they were forced to return and find their carriages,pacing together with the rhythmic step well-known to lovers.Raoul had faith in that kiss given with the quiet facility of a sacred sentiment.All the evil of it was in the mind of the world,not in that of the woman who walked beside him.Marie herself,given over to the grateful admiration which characterizes the love of woman,walked with a firm,light step on the gravelled path,saying,like Raoul,but few words;yet those few were felt and full of meaning.The sky was cloudless,the tall trees had burgeoned,a few green shoots were already brightening their myriad of brown twigs.The shrubs,the birches,the willows,the poplars were showing their first diaphanous and tender foliage.No soul resists these harmonies.Love explained Nature as it had already explained society to Marie's heart.
"I wish you have never loved any one but me,"she said.
