第24章
"You do not vex me," she answered, suddenly grown gentle and submissive."But why do you wish to compromise me? For me you ought to be nothing but a FRIEND.Do you not know it? I wish Icould see that you had the instincts, the delicacy of real friendship, so that I might lose neither your respect nor the pleasure that your presence gives me.""Nothing but your FRIEND!" he cried out.The terrible word sent an electric shock through his brain."On the faith of these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your heart.And now today, for no reason, you are pleased to destroy all the secret hopes by which I live.You have required promises of such constancy in me, you have said so much of your horror of women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do you wish me to understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have passions, and know nothing of love? If so, why did you ask my life of me? why did you accept it?""I was wrong, my friend.Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to such intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return.""I understand.You have merely been coquetting with me, and----""Coquetting?" she repeated."I detest coquetry.A coquette Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a woman who keeps such promises is a libertine.This much Ibelieved I had grasped of our code.But to be melancholy with humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each one his little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as much a matter of necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or flowers in one's hair.Such talk is the moral counterpart of the toilette.You take it up and lay it aside with the plumed head-dress.Do you call this coquetry? Why, I have never treated you as I treat everyone else.With you, my friend, I am sincere.Have I not always shared your views, and when you convinced me after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad?
In short, I love you, but only as a devout and pure woman may love.I have thought it over.I am a married woman, Armand.My way of life with M.de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my heart; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of my person.If a woman loses her honour, she is an outcast in any rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single example of a man that realises all that our sacrifices demand of him in such a case.Quite otherwise.Anyone can foresee the rupture between Mme de Beauseant and M.d'Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de Rochefide, it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that these very sacrifices on the woman's part are almost always the cause of the man's desertion.If you had loved me sincerely, you would have kept away for a time.--Now, I will lay aside all vanity for you; is not that something? What will not people say of a woman to whom no man attaches himself? Oh, she is heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid of charm! Coquettes will not spare me.They will rob me of the very qualities that mortify them.So long as my reputation is safe, what do I care if my rivals deny my merits? They certainly will not inherit them.Come, my friend; give up something for her who sacrifices so much for you.Do not come quite so often;I shall love you none the less."
"Ah!" said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart in his words and tone."Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds on illusions.Nothing could be truer, I see; I am expected to imagine that I am loved.But, there!--there are some thoughts like wounds, from which there is no recovery.My belief in you was one of the last left to me, and now I see that there is nothing left to believe in this earth."She began to smile.
"Yes," Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, "this Catholic faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a lie between us and our fellows; and pity, and prudence, and terror are cunning lies.And now my happiness is to be one more lying delusion; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the end.If you can so easily dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither as your friend nor your lover, you do not care for me! And I, poor fool that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!""But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion!""I flying into a passion?"
"Yes.You think that the whole question is opened because I ask you to be careful."In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that leapt out in her lover's eyes.Even as she tortured him, she was criticising him, watching every slightest change that passed over his face.If the General had been so unluckily inspired as to show himself generous without discussion (as happens occasionally with some artless souls), he would have been a banished man forever, accused and convicted of not knowing how to love.Most women are not displeased to have their code of right and wrong broken through.Do they not flatter themselves that they never yield except to force? But Armand was not learned enough in this kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the Duchess.So much of the child was there in the strong man in love.
"If all you want is to preserve appearances," he began in his simplicity, "I am willing to----""Simply to preserve appearances!" the lady broke in; "why, what idea can you have of me? Have I given you the slightest reason to suppose that I can be yours?""Why, what else are we talking about?" demanded Montriveau.