he pressed his lips.
When she was in bed he rose to his feet, very pale.
“She’s coming to,” he said; “it’s nothing,” for he had heard that her breathing was continuous and regular. But seeing the men’s eyes fixed upon Yvette stretched across the bed, a spasm of jealous fury seized him. He went up to them, saying:
“Gentlemen, there are too many of us in this room. Be good enough to leave Monsieur Saval and myself alone with the Marquise.”
His voice was sharp and authoritative. The other men left at once.
Madame Obardi had seized her lover in her arms and, with her face raised to his, was crying:
“Save her! … Oh, save her!”
But Servigny, who had turned round, saw a letter on the table. With a swift movement he picked it up and read the address. He guessed the whole affair at once and thought: “Perhaps the Marquise had better not know about this.” And tearing open the envelope, he read at a glance the two lines which it contained:
I die so that I may not become a kept woman.
“Deuce take it,” he said to himself. “This needs thinking over”; and he hid the letter in his pocket. He returned to the bedside, and at once the thought came to him that the young girl had regained consciousness, but dared not show it, out of shame, humiliation, and a dread of being questioned.
The Marquise had fallen on her knees and was weeping, her head resting on the foot of the bed. Suddenly she exclaimed:
“A doctor! We must have a doctor!”
But Servigny, who had been whispering to Saval, said to her:
“No, it’s all right now. Just go out for a minute and I promise you that she’ll be ready to kiss you when you come back.”
The baron took Madame Obardi’s arm and led her away. Servigny sat down beside the bed and took Yvette’s hand.
“Listen to me, Mam’zelle,” he said.
She did not answer. She felt so happy, so comfortable, so cosy and warm that she would have liked never to move or speak again, but to live on in this state. A sense of infinite well-being possessed her, like no sensation she had ever known. The warm night air drifted into the room in a gentle, caressing breeze, and from time to time its faint breath blew sweetly across her face. It was a caress, the wind’s kiss, the soft refreshing breath of a fan made of all the leaves in the wood, all the shadows of the night, all the mists of the river, and all the flowers, for the roses strewn upon the floor and the bed, and the rose-tree that clung to the balcony, mingled their languid fragrance with the healthy tang of the night breeze.
She drank in the good air, her eyes closed, her senses still half adrift in the intoxication of the drug; she no longer felt a wish to die, but a strong, imperious desire to live, to be happy, no matter how, to be loved, yes, loved.
“Mam’zelle Yvette, listen to me,” repeated Servigny.
She decided to open her eyes. Seeing her thus revived, he went on:
“Come now, what’s all this foolishness?”
“I was so unhappy, Muscade,” she murmured.
He gave her hand a benevolent squeeze.
“Well, this has been a deuce of a lot of use to you, now, hasn’t it? Now promise me not to try again.”
She did not answer, but made a little movement of her head, and emphasised it with a smile that he felt rather than saw.
He took from his pocket the letter he had found on the table.
“Am I to show this to your mother?” he asked.
“No,” she signed with a movement of her head.
He did not know what more to say, for there seemed no way out of the situation.
“My dear little girl,” he murmured, “we must all accept our share of things, however sad. I understand your grief, and I promise …”
“You’re so kind …” she stammered.
They were silent. He looked at her. There was tenderness and surrender in her glance, and suddenly she raised her arms, as if she wished to draw him to her. He bent over her, feeling that she was calling him, and their lips met.
For a long time they stayed thus with closed eyes. But he, realising that he was on the point of losing control, raised his head and stood up. She was smiling at him now with real tenderness, and, gripping his shoulders with both hands, she tried to hold him back.
“I’m going to fetch your mother,” he said.
“One more second,” she murmured. “I’m so happy.”
Then, after a brief interval of silence, she said very softly, so softly that he hardly heard her:
“You will love me very much, won’t you?”
He knelt down by the bedside and kissed her wrist, which she held out to him.
“I adore you.”
But there were footsteps at the door. He sprang up and cried in his ordinary voice, with its faint note of irony:
“You can come in. It’s all over now.”
The Marquise flung herself upon her daughter with open arms, and embraced her frantically, covering her face with tears. Servigny, his heart full of joy and his body on fire with love, stepped out on to the balcony to breathe deeply of the cool night air, humming:
“Souvent femme varie;
Bien fol est qui s’y fie.”20
Mad?
When I was told: “You know that Jacques Parent has died mad in the asylum,” a painful shiver, a shiver of fear and anguish, ran through my frame; and suddenly I saw him again, the tall, queer fellow, mad for many years perhaps, a disturbing, even a frightening, maniac.
He was a man of forty, tall, thin, slightly stooping, with the eyes of one suffering from hallucinations, black eyes so black that the pupils were imperceptible, expressive, wandering, morbid, haunted eyes. A strange, disturbing creature, bringing with him and spreading round him a vague uneasiness of soul and body, one of those incomprehensible nervous
