Part 66 (1/2)

Vaudrey turned round abruptly, instinctively pus.h.i.+ng aside Molina's prospectus, as if he already felt some shame in holding it in his hands.

He flushed as he recognized Adrienne.

The young woman's reserved att.i.tude showed absolute firmness. She came to say adieu, she was about to leave.

He had not even the energy to keep her. He was afraid of an unbending reply that would have been an outrage.

”Do you intend to become a.s.sociated with Molina?” Adrienne asked in a clear voice, as she looked at Sulpice, who had risen.

”What! Molina?” he stammered.

”Yes, oh! he understands business. On leaving, he called on me. He thought that I had still sufficient influence over you to urge you, as he says, to make your fortune. He told me that you were in want of money, and after having been sharp enough to try the husband, he offered me, as you might give a commission to a courtesan, I do not know what emerald ornament, if I would advise you to accept his proposals!--That gentleman does not know the people with whom he is dealing!”

”Wretch!” said Vaudrey. ”He did that?”

”And I thanked him,” Adrienne replied calmly. ”I did not know that you had debts and that, in order to pay them, you had come so near accepting the patronage of such a man. He told me so and he rendered me and you a service.”

”Me?”

Vaudrey s.n.a.t.c.hed up the prospectus of the Algerian gas and angrily tore it in pieces.

”We shall probably not see each other again,” said Adrienne, in a firm voice that contrasted strangely with her gentle grace; ”but I shall never forget that I bear your name and that being mine, I will ever honor it.”

She handed Sulpice a doc.u.ment.

”Here is a power of attorney to Monsieur Beauvais, my notary. All that you need of my dowry to free yourself from liabilities is yours. I do not wish to know why you have incurred debts, I am anxious only to know that you have paid them, and my signature provides you with the means to do so.”

Dejected, his heart burning, and his sobs rising, Sulpice uttered a loud cry as he rushed toward her:

”Adrienne!”

She withdrew her hand slowly while he was trying to seize it.

”You have nothing to thank me for,” she said. ”I am a partner, saving, as I best can, the honor of the house. That a.s.sociation is better than Molina's.”

”Adieu,” she added bitterly.

”Are you going--? Going away?” asked Sulpice, trying to give to his entreaty something like an echo of the love of the former days.

”Whose fault is it?” replied the young woman, in a voice as chilly as steel.

She was no longer the Adrienne of old, the little timid provincial with blus.h.i.+ng cheek and trembling gesture. Sorrow, the most terrible of disillusions, had hardened and, as it were, petrified her. Vaudrey felt that to ask forgiveness would be in vain. Time only could soften that poor woman, obstinately unbending in her grief. He needed but to observe her att.i.tude and cutting tones to fully realize that.

”It is quite understood,” she continued, treating this question of her happiness as if she were cutting deep into her flesh and severing the tenderest fibres of her being, but without trembling,--”it is quite understood, is it not, that we shall make no scene or scandal? We are separated neither judicially nor even in appearance. We live apart by mutual consent, far from each other, without anything being known by outsiders of this definitive rupture.”

”Adrienne!” Sulpice repeated, ”it is impossible, you will not leave!”

”Oh!” she said. ”I gave myself and I have taken myself back. Your entreaties will not now alter my determination. I am eager to leave Paris. It seems to me that I have regained myself and that I escape from falsity, lies, and infamy, and from a swarm of insects that crawl over my body!--I bid you farewell, and farewell it is!”