“What a nice head you have,” she said with a laugh.
He was hurt, irritated by her teasing, filled with the savage fury of the derided lover. He yielded to a vague desire to punish her, to avenge himself; he wanted to hurt her.
“You’d like that sort of life, would you?” he said.
“What sort?” she asked, with her most innocent air.
“Come now, no more nonsense. You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“No, honestly, I don’t.”
“We’ve had enough of this comedy. Will you or won’t you?”
“I don’t understand you in the least.”
“You’re not so stupid as all that. Besides, I told you last night.”
“What? I’ve forgotten.”
“That I love you.”
“You!”
“Yes, I!”
“What a lie!”
“I swear it’s true.”
“Prove it, then.”
“I ask for nothing better.”
“Well, do, then.”
“You didn’t say that last night.”
“You didn’t propose anything.”
“Oh, this is absurd!”
“Besides, I am not the one to be asked.”
“That’s very kind of you! Who is, then?”
“Mamma, of course.”
He gave way to a fit of laughter.
“Your mother? No, really, that’s too much!”
She had suddenly become very serious, and, looking into his eyes, said:
“Listen, Muscade, if you really love me enough to marry me, speak to mamma first, and I’ll give you my answer afterwards.”
At that he lost his temper altogether, thinking that she was still playing the fool with him.
“What do you take me for, Mam’zelle? An idiot like the rest of your admirers?”
She continued to gaze at him with calm, clear eyes. After a moment’s hesitation she said:
“I still don’t understand.”
“Now look here, Yvette,” he said brusquely, with a touch of rudeness and ill nature in his voice. “Let’s have done with this ridiculous comedy, which has already gone on too long. You keep on playing the innocent maiden, and, believe me, the part doesn’t suit you at all. You know perfectly well that there can be no question of marriage between us—but only of love. I told you I loved you—it’s quite true—I repeat, I do love you. Now don’t pretend not to understand, and don’t treat me as though I were a fool.”
They were upright in the water, face to face, supporting themselves by little movements of the hands. For some seconds more she continued motionless, as though she could not make up her mind to understand his words, then suddenly she blushed to the roots of her hair. The blood rushed in a swift tide from her neck to her ears, which turned almost purple, and without a word she fled landwards, swimming with all her strength, with hurried, powerful strokes. He could not overtake her, and the pursuit left him breathless. He saw her leave the water, pick up her wrap, and enter her cabin, without turning her head.
He took a long time to dress, very puzzled what to do, planning what to say to her, and wondering whether to apologise or persevere.
When he was ready, she had gone, alone. He returned slowly, worried and anxious. The Marquise, on Saval’s arm, was strolling along the circular path round the lawn. At sight of Servigny she spoke with the careless air she had assumed on the previous evening:
“Didn’t I tell you not to go out in such heat? Now Yvette has sunstroke; she’s gone to lie down. She was as scarlet as a poppy, poor child, and has a frightful headache. You must have been walking full in the sun, and up to some mischief or other, heaven knows what. You have no more sense than she has.”
The young girl did not come down to dinner. When she was asked if she would like something brought up to her room, she replied through the closed door that she was not hungry—she had locked herself in and wished to be left alone. The two young men left by the ten o’clock train, promising to come again the following Thursday, and the Marquise sat down by the open window and, musing, listened to the far-off sound of dance-music jerked out at La Grenouillère, vibrating in the profoundly solemn silence of night.
Inured and hardened to love by love, as a man is to riding or rowing, she nevertheless had sudden moments of tenderness which attacked her like a disease. These passions seized roughly upon her, swept through her whole being, driving her mad, exhausting her, or depressing her according to their nature, lofty, violent, dramatic, or sentimental.
She was one of those women who were created to love and to be loved. From a very humble beginning she had climbed high through love, of which she had made a profession almost without being aware of it: acting by instinct, by inborn skill, she accepted money as she accepted kisses, naturally, without distinguishing between them, employing her amazing intuition in an unreasoning and utterly simple fashion, as animals, made cunning by the struggle for life, employ theirs. She had had many lovers for whom she felt no tenderness, yet at whose embraces she had not felt disgust. She endured all caresses with calm indifference, just as a traveller eats anything, because he must live. But from time to time her heart or her flesh caught fire, and she fell into a passion which lasted weeks or months, according to the physical and moral qualities of her lover. These were the delicious moments of her life. She loved with her whole soul, her whole body, with ecstatic abandon. She threw herself into love like a suicide into
