that morning. If, momentarily, she was almost sorrowfully dazed by the revelation of intense pleasure, the recollection of it had calmed down to a feeling of confident surrender. For I had been able to guide her (without either offending her delicacy or ravaging her flesh) to the very threshold of the intoxicating kingdom of voluptuousness. And at last, rid of all fear, she was now vibrating with joyous impatience, similar to a child who, on coming to the end of an unknown road, suddenly discovers the blue expanse of the sea, glittering in the morning sun.
CHAPTER IX
I descended into the garden and, with the intention of surprising her, advanced with the precautions of a Red Indian. The gravel crunched under my feet treacherously. Therese, with her back turned to the house, pretended not to hear me; yet she kept her blond head bent down: a victim presenting her neck to the executioner. So upon it I deposited a long and greedy kiss. Therese thrilled with joy and burst into a ripple of laughter.
Seeing that the book upon her knees was closed, I asked her:
'Have you read much?'
'Much? No. But very conscientiously. I've read the same half-page ten times.'
'You have been learning it by heart?'
'I tried merely to understand. But I never got to the end of the sentence.'
'Absent-minded? — because of me?'
'By no means, conceited man! My absent-mindedness was the fruitful one of great thinkers. I'm Thomas Aquinus, Newton, Einsteinwhoever you like. I've made a great discovery.'
'Bless my soul! And what may you have discovered?'
'That the Almighty is marvellously intelligent and that his Creation is not so badly managed. Moreover, I've told Him so while you left me to my solitude. And I've presented humble apologies to Him for having believed that the world consisted of my silly life as a young girl.'
'Not so silly as that.'
'Oh! yes, — it was stupid. Do you know what I resembled, without knowing it? I was like those idiotic tourists who, in their Pullman cars, read their newspapers, or snooze, — wholly unaware that, behind the lowered blinds, there lies the whole of Provence singing in the sun.'
'Yet, more knowing than the old gentleman of the Pullman, you divined beforehand the sunlit countryside?'
'I divined it incompletely; and hoped, sometimes, that the blind would not be raised too soon.'
'The landscape didn't interest you?' 'I feared to see, in its place, only other railway carriages, stupidly similar to mine. Or else I feared that the blind would be brutally raised to reveal some vulgar landscape, the crude light of which would have blinded me.' 'You have that fear no longer?' 'Do you still dare to ask me that, hypocrite?' Her eyes, fixed upon me, suddenly became sad. I guessed the reason: the shadows cast by the unconfessed procession of fleshly thoughts, suddenly awakened. Momentarily, she remained silent, and then solicited an encouragement: 'You promise not to make fun of me?' Without uttering a single word, I pressed her to me.
'It's difficult to explain,' she said. 'Because I would ask for your pardon, but pardon for something over which I feel no remorse'.
Suddenly growing bolder, she added, 'You understand, I regret nothing, — nothing as regards that night on which I surrendered myself wholly to your caresses. Not a single action do I regret, — not a single one of my attitudes the most…'
She hesitated, so I sought to help her by attenuating her thought:
'The most amorous?'
'No. How can I express it?'
Turning her head away a little, she became more explicit:
'The most indecent. I'm a little ashamed of them, but I feel not the slightest remorse.'
'In that case, darling, what have I to pardon?'
'Why, precisely that, — for having so totally surrendered myself.'
'You regret it?'
'I regret nothing, as I've just told you. But now I understand the madness which I read in your eyes when we arrived here. And I should like you, in your turn, to pardon me, if I appeared to you to have been…
I don't know how to put it… well, bestial… nay, perhaps repulsive.'
'Oh! Be silent! Be silent! Do not profane the ecstasy which your quivering body gave me, — so intensely quivering under my caresses.'
But that imprudently evoked scene now stood out in my recollections with intense and cruel clearness. The doubts which had assailed me that morning reawakened with my desire; and once more I reproached myself for not having possessed my wife during the acute crisis of my lust. A bitter regret-compounded of humiliation, self- contempt, and a dim feeling of rancour against Therese-came over me. To the more rapid rhythm of my temples (the throbbing of which had several times already almost precipitated my defeat) the saraband of my thoughts was accelerated and whirled around a fixed idea. This idea became more and more distinct and hallucinating, — there, on the thick, sunbathed grass I saw the spot where I would throw Therese on to her back and have her, after the fashion of the animals, without fear of the huge expanse of sky above them, and without needless caresses.
Sufficient lucidity to calculate the stupid brutality of such an act still remained. Yet with terrifying certitude I knew that my instinct was the stronger. Intoxicated by the excess of my lust, — dazzled by lascivious images, I staggered to my feet and drew Therese towards the sunny lawn where I was to crush her body and satiate myself in her flesh. She
made no resistance; but her voice, which at first appeared to come to me from far, far away, seemed to come nearer all of a sudden, and dragged me from my hallucination.
'Darling-oh! my darling! Are you suffering? Come back and sit down. There now, my little one, rest your head on my shoulder.'
With childish words, she calmed me down, — those tender, simple words the sweet reasonableness of which is understood only by lovers.
Yet she bore upon her own shoulders the accusation for my troubled state:
'I am taking a cowardly advantage of your generosity, my poor dear. I am unworthy of the delicacy you show me, — unworthy of all the precautions inspired by your tenderness. This is too cruel a trial for you. and it must not be protracted. And yet…'
'And yet… you prefer to wait?'.
''Yes' and 'no'. When my desire, born last night under your caresses, again responds to your appeal, my whole body will revolt against the attack. But when I am in a more lucid state of mind it seems to me that I ought still to resist against my instinct, just as you knew how to combat yours. For we are, as yet, only half way on our journey.'
'Why? Because you don't love me sufficiently yet?'
'Don't love you sufficiently?'
She shook her head sadly, without refuting an idea which I myself felt was an absurdity.
'No, but I don't know you sufficiently well yet. You-you know me through and through; there is not a corner of my body whose reaction to your caresses you do not know. But what do I know about you, my darling?'
We remained silent, without stating precisely a barely formulated thought, yet one which reverberated, in a series of ominous echoes, in our flesh. However, no temptation to profit by the regret expressed by Therese and to guide her hand to the discovery of my own body overcame me. Assuredly I had many times imagined that exploration and anticipated the pleasure of its exciting stages. But I was now afraid of Therese's ignorance, — afraid of the possibility of arousing in her a feeling of disgust. Was this an instance of ridiculous timidity on my part?… It was, I think, a much more complex feeling, heavily dosed with self-centredness. For, wishing to make my wife the caressing worshipper of my virility, I was fearful (through a lack of patience) of turning her merely into the passive and disgusting slave of my lust.
