The great difficulty was to keep the two lives going side by side without their clashing: her everyday life and that other, the great life of the mind, with its far-flung horizons. It was not always easy. Fortunately Arnaud also lived to some extent in an imaginary life, in books, and works of art, the eternal fire of which fed the flickering flames of his soul. But during the last few years he had become more and more preoccupied with the petty annoyances of his profession, injustice and favoritism, and friction with his colleagues or his pupils: he was embittered: he began to talk politics, and to inveigh against the Government and the Jews: and he made Dreyfus responsible for his disappointments at the university. His mood of soreness infected Madame Arnaud a little. She was at an age when her vital force was upset and uneasy, groping for balance. There were great gaps in her thoughts. For a time they both lost touch with life, and their reason for existence: for they had nothing to which to bind their spider’s web, which was left hanging in the void. Though the support of reality be never so weak, yet for dreams there must be one. They had no sort of support. They could not contrive any means of propping each other up. Instead of helping her, he clung to her. And she knew perfectly well that she was not strong enough to hold him up, for she could not even support herself. Only a miracle could save her. She prayed for it to come. It came from the depths of her soul. In her solitary pious heart Madame Arnaud felt the irony of the sublime and absurd hunger for creation in spite of everything, the need of weaving her web in spite of everything, through space, for the joy of weaving, leaving it to the wind, the breath of God, to carry her whithersoever it was ordained that she should go. And the breath of God gave her a new hold on life, and found her an invisible support. Then the husband and wife both set patiently to work once more to weave the magnificent and vain web of their dreams, a web fashioned of their purest suffering and their blood.
Madame Arnaud was alone in her room. … It was near evening.
The doorbell rang. Madame Arnaud, roused from her reverie before the usual time, started and trembled. She carefully arranged her work and went to open the door. Christophe came in. He was in a great state of emotion. She took his hands affectionately.
“What is it, my dear?” she asked.
“Ah!” he said. “Olivier has come back.”
“Come back?”
“He came this morning and said: ‘Christophe, help me!’ I embraced him. He wept. He told me: ‘I have nothing but you now. She has gone.’ ”
Madame Arnaud gasped, and clasped her hands and said:
“Poor things!”
“She has gone,” said Christophe. “Gone with her lover.”
“And her child?” asked Madame Arnaud.
“Husband, child—she has left everything.”
“Poor thing!” said Madame Arnaud again.
“He loved her,” said Christophe. “He loved her, and her alone. He will never recover from the blow. He keeps on saying: ‘Christophe, she has betrayed me. … My dearest friend has betrayed me.’ It is no good my saying to him, ‘Since she has betrayed you, she cannot have been your friend. She is your enemy. Forget her or kill her!’ ”
“Oh! Christophe, what are you saying! It is too horrible!”
“Yes, I know. You all think it barbaric and prehistoric to kill! It is jolly to hear these Parisians protesting against the brutal instincts which urge the male to kill the female if she deceives him, and preaching indulgence and reason! They’re splendid apostles! It is a fine thing to see the pack of mongrel dogs waxing wrath against the return to animalism. After outraging life, after having robbed it of its worth, they surround it with religious worship. … What! That heartless, dishonorable, meaningless life, the mere physical act of breathing, the beating of the blood in a scrap of flesh, these are the things which they hold worthy of respect! They are never done with their niceness about the flesh: it is a crime to touch it. You may kill the soul if you like, but the body is sacred. …”
“The murderers of the soul are the worst of all: but one crime is no excuse for another. You know that.”
“I know it. Yes. You are right. I did not think what I was saying. … Who knows? I should do it, perhaps.”
“No. You are unfair to yourself. You are so kind.”
“If I am roused to passion, I am as cruel as the rest. You see how I had lost control of myself! … But when you see a friend brought to tears, how can you not hate the person who has caused them? And how can one be too hard on a woman who leaves her child to run after her lover?”
“Don’t talk like that, Christophe. You don’t know.”
“What! You defend her?”
“I pity her, too.”
“I pity those who suffer. Not those who cause suffering.”
“Well! Do you think she hasn’t suffered too? Do you think she has left her child and wrecked her life out of lightness of heart? For her life is wrecked too. I hardly know her, Christophe. I have only seen her a few times, and that only in passing: she never said a friendly word to me, she was not in sympathy with me. And yet I know her better than you. I am sure she is not a bad woman. Poor child! I can guess what she has had to go through. …”
“You. … You whose life is so worthy and so right and sensible! …”
“Yes, Christophe, I. You do not know. You are kind, but you are a man and, like all men, you are hard, in spite of your kindness—a man hard and set against everything which is not in and of yourself. You have no real knowledge of the women who live with
