The tall woman, preceded by her two daughters aged twelve and fifteen, was coming towards them and turned suddenly pale when she noticed the officer. She gazed at him longingly, intently, she had eyes for no one around her, neither her children, her husband, nor the crowd. She returned the greeting of the two young men without lowering a glance so charged with passion that some suspicions did at last enter and tenant Renoldi’s mind. D’Henricel murmured: “I was sure of it. Did you notice this time? By gad, she’s a fine woman!”
But Jean Renoldi had no wish for a society intrigue. Caring little for love, he wanted more than anything else a quiet life and was quite content with the occasional amours which fall to the lot of every young man. He was bored by the sentimentality, the attentions, the tenderness exacted by a well-bred woman. He was afraid of the chain, however light, he would have to drag as a result of an adventure of this kind. He said:
“I shall be sick to death of it at the end of four weeks, and politeness will oblige me to wait patiently for six months.” Then again the thought of a rupture filled him with exasperation, with its scenes, its allusions, and the frenzied clinging of the woman who is being abandoned.
He avoided meeting Madame Poinçot.
But one evening he found himself seated beside her at a dinner-party and felt her passionate glance fixed on him the whole time; their hands met and, almost involuntarily, closed over each other. That was already the beginning of a love affair.
He met her again, always in spite of himself. He knew she loved him, and felt a softening towards her, moved by a kind of pitying vanity at the sight of the woman’s intense passion. So he allowed himself to be adored and was merely attentive, hoping that the matter would go no further.
Then she made an appointment with him, to meet and talk without outside interference, so she explained, and fell fainting into his arms. He had no alternative but to become her lover.
This lasted six months. She loved him with an unbridled, reckless love, forgetting everything in the clutches of her frenzied passion. She had given herself up entirely. Body, soul, reputation, position and happiness had all been cast into the red-hot fire of her love as one casts all one’s precious possessions on the altar of sacrifice.
He had had enough of it for some time and keenly regretted his easy conquest, but he was bound and held prisoner. She was always saying: “I have given you everything; what more do you want?” He would have liked to answer: “But I never asked for anything, if only you would take back what you have given me!” Quite indifferent as to whether anyone saw her, whether she was compromised, or her reputation ruined, she would come to see him every evening, growing more and more ardent as time went on. She would throw herself into his arms, press him to her bosom, swoon under feverish kisses which bored him horribly. He would say languidly: “Come, come, be sensible.” She would reply: “I love you!” and fall upon her knees and gaze at him in an attitude of devotion. This invariably ended by exasperating him, but when he tried to make her get up, saying: “Come, sit down. Let us have a chat,” she muttered: “No, leave me alone,” and remained on her knees in a state of ecstasy.
He said to his friend d’Henricel: “You know, I could beat her. I have had enough of it, enough of it. It must end; and that at once!” adding: “What do you advise me to do?” The friend replied: “Break it off.” Renoldi added with a shrug of the shoulders: “It’s easy enough to say that; you think it’s easy to break with a woman who persecutes you with her tenderness, whose only care is to please you, and whose only fault is to have given herself unasked?”
Then one morning they heard that the regiment was to change garrison, and Renoldi danced for joy. He was saved, saved without scenes, without tears! Saved!—The only thing now required was two months’ patience!—Saved!
In the evening she came to him more excited than ever. She had heard the dreadful news, and, without taking her hat off, she caught hold of his hands, pressing them nervously, her eyes fixed on his, her voice shaking but determined: “You are leaving; I know it,” she said; “I bring you the greatest proof of love that a woman can give; I am going to follow you. For you I am leaving my husband, my children, my family. It will be my ruin but I am happy; it seems as if I were giving myself to you over again. It is the last, the greatest sacrifice; I am yours forever!”
He broke out in a cold perspiration and was filled with a dull, furious rage—the anger of weakness. Nevertheless he calmed down, and with a detached air and gentle voice refused her sacrifice, trying to pacify her, to reason with her, to make her see her folly: she listened silently, looking him straight in the face with her dark eyes, a smile of disdain on her lips. When he stopped, all she said was:
“Can you be a coward? Can you be the kind of man who seduces a woman and then deserts her for the first caprice?”
He paled and tried to reason with her again; he pointed out the
