Part 52 (1/2)
Lissac laughed a little nervously and trembled slightly, trying to joke but feeling himself suddenly weakening in the presence of this woman whose wrath or contemptuous smile he preferred.
He recognized all the vanished perfumes. The sensation of trembling delight that years had borne away now returned to him. The silent pressure of the hands recalled nights of distraction. He half shut his eyes, a sudden madness overcame him, although he was sufficiently calm to say to himself that she had an end in view, this woman's coming to him, loveless, to speak of love to him, herself unmoved by the senses, to awaken vanished feelings, to offer herself with the irresistible skill of desire: a dead pa.s.sion born of caprice.
”Nevertheless, it is you who left me, satiated after taking from me all that you were capable of loving,” she said. ”Do you know one thing, however, Guy? There is more than one woman in a woman. There are as many as she possesses of pa.s.sions or joys, and the Marianne of to-day is so different from the one who was your mistress formerly!--You would never leave me, if you were my lover now!”
She tempted this man whose curiosity was aroused, accustomed as he was to casual and easy love adventures. He foresaw danger, but there within reach of his lips were experienced kisses, an ardent supplicant, a proffered delight, full of burning promise. In a sort of anger, he seized the woman who recalled all the past joys, uttered the well-known cries, and who suddenly, as in a nervous attack, deliriously plucked the covering from her bosom, and bared with the boldness of beauty that knows itself to be irresistible, her white arms, her brilliant, untrammeled b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the sparkling splendor of her flesh, with her golden hair unfastened, as she used to appear lying on a pillow of fair silk, almost faint and between her kisses, that were as fierce as bites, uttering: ”I love you--you--I adore you--” And the lovely, imperious girl again became, almost without a word having been exchanged, the submissive woman carried away by lascivious ardor; and Guy, confused and speechless, no longer reasoning, was unable to say whether Marianne belonged to him, or he to the mistress of former days, become the mistress of to-day.
He held her clasped to him, his hand raising her pale, languis.h.i.+ng face about which her fair hair fell loosely; to him she looked like one asleep, her pink nostrils still dilating with a spasmodic movement, and it seemed to him that he had just suffered from the perturbing contact of a courtesan in the depths of some luxurious den.
It was an immediate reawakening, enervating but furious. She had given herself impulsively. He recovered himself similarly. The sudden contact of two bodies resulted in the immediate recoil of two beings.
With more bitter shame, he had had similar morose awakenings after a dissipated night, his heart, his brave heart thumping against the pa.s.sionate form, often lean and sallow, of some satiated girl, fearfully weary.
What cowardice! Was it Vaudrey's mistress or the future wife of Rosas who had clung to his lips?
He felt disgusted at heart.
Yet she was adorable, this still young and lovely Marianne.
With cruel perspicacity, he already foresaw that he would be guilty of cowardly conduct in yielding to this sudden weakness, and ashamed of himself he disengaged himself from her hysterical embrace, while Marianne squatted on his bed, throwing back her hair from her face, still smiling as she looked at him and asked:
”Well--what? What is the matter with you, then?”
She rose slowly, slipping upon the carpet while he went to the window to look mechanically into the yard. Between these two creatures but a moment before clasped together, a sudden icy coldness sprung up as if each had divined that the hour was about to sound, terrible as a knell, when their affairs must be settled. The kisses of love are to be paid for.
Standing before the mirror, half undressed, Marianne was arranging her hair. Her white shoulders, her still heaving and oppressed bosom were still exposed within the border of her fine chemisette. She felt her wrists, instinctively examining her bracelets, and looked toward the bed in an absent sort of way as if to see if some charm had not slipped from them.
”Guy,” she said abruptly, but in a tone which she tried to make endearing, ”promise me that you will not refuse what I am about to ask you.”
”I promise.”
They now quite naturally subst.i.tuted for the ”thou” of affectionate address, the more formal ”you,” secretly realizing that after the intertwining of their bodies, their real individualities independent of all surprises or sensual appet.i.te, would find themselves face to face.
”I could wish that our affection--and it is profound, is it not, Guy?--dated only from the moment that we have just pa.s.sed.”
”I do not regret the past,” he said.
”Nor I! Yet I would like to efface it--yes, by a single stroke!”
She held between her white fingers some rebellious little locks of hair that had come out, which she had rolled and twisted, and casting them into the clear flame, she said:
”See! to burn it like that!--_Pft!_--”
”Burn it?” Lissac repeated.
He had left the window, returned to Marianne and smiling in his turn, he said:
”Why burn it?--Because it is tiresome or because it is dangerous?”
”Both!” she replied.