“I love you! I love you!”
III
Nor could Yvette sleep. Like her mother, she sat at the open window, resting her elbows on the sill, and tears, her first bitter tears, filled her eyes.
Till now she had lived and grown up in the heedless and serene self-confidence of happy youth. Why should she have analysed, wondered, reflected? Why should she not have been like all young girls of her age? Why should doubt, fear, painful suspicions have troubled her? Because she seemed to talk about every subject, because she had taken the tone, the manner, the bold speech of those around her, she had seemed to know all about everything. But she knew hardly more than a girl brought up in a convent; her risky phrases came from her memory, from the faculty women possess of imitation and assimilation, not from a mind already sophisticated and debauched.
She talked of love in the same way that an artist’s or musician’s son talks of painting and music at ten or twelve years of age. She knew, or rather suspected, the sort of mystery hidden behind this word—too many jests had been whispered in her presence for her innocence to remain completely unenlightened—but how was she to tell from this that every household was not like the one she lived in? Her mother’s hand was kissed with apparent respect; all their friends were titled; all were rich, or appeared to be; all spoke familiarly of princes of the blood royal. Two king’s sons had actually come several times, in the evening, to the Marquise’s house. How was she to know?
And, besides, she was by nature innocent. She did not probe into things, she had not her mother’s intuitive judgment of other people. She lived tranquilly, too full of the joy of life to worry about circumstances which might have roused suspicions in people of more quiet, more thoughtful, more secluded ways, who were less impulsive and less radiantly joyous. And now, in a single instant, by a few words whose brutality she had felt without understanding, Servigny had roused in her a sudden uneasiness, an uneasiness at first unreasoning, and now growing into a torturing fear.
She had gone home, had fled from him like a wounded animal; deeply wounded, indeed, by the words she repeated to herself again and again, trying to penetrate their farthest meaning, trying to guess their whole implication: “You know perfectly well that there can be no question of marriage between us—but of love!”
What had he meant? And why the harshness? There was something, then, some shameful secret, of which she was in ignorance? Doubtless she was the only one in ignorance of it. What was it? She was terrified, crushed, as at the discovery of a hidden infamy, the treachery of a friend, one of those calamities of the heart which strike at one’s very reason.
She had thought, wondered, pored over it, wept, consumed with fears and suspicions. Then her young and buoyant nature calmed her, and she began to imagine an adventure, to build up an unusual and dramatic situation drawn from her remembrance of all the fanciful romances she had read. She recalled exciting changes of fortune, gloomy and heartrending plots, and mingled them with her own story, to fling a romantic glory round the half-seen mystery which surrounded her.
She was no longer miserable, she was wholly wrapped up in her dreams. She lifted mysterious veils, imagined improbable complications, a thou sand curious and terrible ideas, attractive through their very strangeness. Was she, by any chance, the natural daughter of a prince? Had her unfortunate mother been reduced and deserted, created a marquise by a king, King Victor Emmanuel perhaps, and had she even been forced to flee from the wrath of her family?
Or was she not more probably a child abandoned by her parents, very noble and famous parents, as the fruit of a guilty love, and found by the marquise, who had adopted her and brought her up? A hundred other notions raced through her head; she accepted or rejected them at the dictates of her fancy. She grew profoundly sorry for herself, at once very happy and very sad; above all, she was delighted at becoming the heroine of a romance with emotions to reveal, a part to act, a dignity and nobility to be upheld. And she thought of the part she would have to play in each plot she imagined. She saw it vaguely, as if she were a character in a novel by Scribe or George Sand. It would be compounded of equal parts of devotion, pride, self-sacrifice, greatness of soul, tenderness, and fine words. Her volatile little heart almost revelled in her new position.
She had continued till nightfall to ponder over her future course of action, wondering how to set to work to drag the truth from the Marquise.
And at the coming of night, so suitable to a tragic situation, she had thought of a trick, a quite simple yet subtle trick, for getting what she wanted; it was to tell her mother very abruptly that Servigny had asked her to marry him. At this news Madame Obardi, in her surprise, would surely let fall a word, an exclamation, that would illumine her daughter’s mind.
So Yvette had promptly put her plan into execution. She expected a burst of astonishment, protests of affection, disclosures, accompanied by tears and every sign of emotion.
And lo and behold! her mother had not apparently been either surprised or heartbroken, merely annoyed; from the worried and peevish tone of her reply the young girl, in whose mind every
