LITMIR.BIZ

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he not thought himself bound now to plead the cause of their love. He grew warm as he spoke, forgetting gradually the oppression of heart that he had felt at the point blank refusal of his mistress, and he melted into gentle and endearing words as he drew a picture of the calm and happy life they would lead when they were married. For some minutes, he thus poured forth his heart in his words, bending over Madeleine in an attitude of prayer and adoration.

      “I am an orphan,” he said, “I have no one in the world but you. Don’t refuse to link your life to mine, or I shall think that Heaven continues to persecute me with its anger, and I shall tell myself that you do not love me enough to wish to assure my happiness. Oh! if you knew how I need your affection! You alone have soothed me, you alone have opened to me a refuge in your arms. And to-day I know not how to thank you; I offer you everything that I have, which is nothing in comparison with the happy hours you have given me and will give me again. Come now, I feel that I shall always be your debtor, Madeleine. We love one another, and marriage cannot increase our affection; but it will permit us to adore each other openly. And what a life ours will be! a life of peace and pride, a confidence without bounds for the future, an affection constant in the present. Madeleine, I implore you.”

      The young woman listened, as if seized with distressing thoughts, with a curbed impatience which gave to her lips the appearance of a peculiar smile. When her lover could find nothing more to say and stopped, with a choking sensation in his throat, from the emotion which was overpowering him, she sat silent for a moment. Then in an unfeeling tone, she exclaimed:

      “You cannot however marry a woman of whose past you know nothing. I must tell you who I am, where I came from, and what I have done before knowing you.”

      William was already on his feet and putting his hand on her mouth.

      “Don’t say a word!” he answered with a sort of terror. “I love you, and I want to know nothing more. Como now, I know you quite well. You are perhaps better than I am; you certainly have more will and strength. You can’t have done wrong. The past is dead; I am speaking to you of the future.”

      Madeleine was struggling in his clasping embrace of supreme tenderness and absolute faith. When she could speak she said:

      “Now listen, you are a child, and I must argue for you. You are rich, you are young, and some day you will reproach me for having accepted your offer too hastily. As for myself, I have nothing, I am a poor girl! but I am anxious to keep my pride, and I should not like you to turn round and accuse me later on of having entered your house as a fortune-hunter. You see, I am frank. I can make you an adorable mistress; but if I were to become your wife, you would say to yourself next day that you ought to have married a girl with a better dowry and more worthy of you than myself.”

      If Madeleine had wished to make William more in earnest, she could not have devised a better method. The suppositions that she was making almost made him weep. Now he had the anger of a child, and swore to overcome his mistress’s resistance at all cost.

      “You don’t know me, Madeleine,” be exclaimed, “and you hurt my feelings. Why do you talk like that? Are you not aware what I have been thinking of and dreaming of, for the whole year that we have been living together? I should like to go to sleep on your breast and never awake. You know very well that that is the desire of my whole being; you do wrong to think that my thoughts are like other men’s. I am a child, you say; ah well! so much the better! you can’t be afraid of a child who trusts in you.”

      He went on in a gentler tone, and fell again into his tender beseeching accents. He spoke so much that his heart was full. Madeleine was giving way. She was touched by this trembling voice which was offering her so humbly the pardon and the esteem of the world. Yet, deep in her heart, there still continued the vague feeling of revolt. When her lover wound up by saying, “You are free, why refuse me this happiness,” she gave a sudden start.

      “Free,” she replied in a strange voice, “yes, I am free.”

      “Well!” added William, “say nothing more of the past. If you have loved before, that love is dead, and I am marrying a widow.”

      Madeleine was struck by this word widow, and became slightly pale. Her hard brow and grey eyes had an expression of painful anxiety.

      “Let us go back,” she said, “night is coming on. I will give you an answer tomorrow.’’

      They went back. The sky had become dark, and the wind was howling mournfully in the trees that overhung the path. When William left Madeleine, he pressed her silently to his heart. He could find no words to say to her, and he wished to take possession of her being by this last embrace.

      Madeleine passed a sleepless night. When she was alone, she reflected on her lover’s proposal. The thought of marriage flattered her feelings, and yet caused her a sort of terrified surprise. A thought of this ceremony had never occurred to her. She had never ventured to indulge in such a dream. Then, as she thought of the calm and worthy life which William offered her, she was very much surprised at feeling so averse to it. At the recollection of the young man’s endearing words, she felt ashamed of having shown so much unfeelingness: she asked herself what secret thought had induced her to refuse such an union, which she ought to have accepted with humility and gratitude. Why those fears, those doubts? Was she not free as William had said? What necessity was making her disdain the unexpected happiness which was coming to her? She became bewildered in these questions, and could only feel herself troubled with a vague sense of disquietude. She could have given herself an answer, but it seemed foolish and ridiculous, and she avoided it. The truth was she was thinking of James. She had felt the memory of this man springing up again confusedly in her being, while her lover was speaking. But it could not be this memory which troubled her. James was dead, and she owed him nothing, not even a regret. By what right had he come to life again in her thoughts to remind her that she was his? The doubts which she felt now about her liberty irritated her deeply. Now that the phantom of her first lover stood before her, she struggled with him in the flesh, she wished to overcome him in order to show him that she was his no longer. And she had a consciousness, in spite of her disdainful smiles, that it was James alone who had been able to make her harsh towards William. This was monstrous, inexplicable. When these thoughts presented themselves clearly, in the nightmares of her sleeplessness, she made up her mind with all the impulsiveness of her nature, that she would silence the dead by marrying the living. Then she fell asleep at daybreak. She dreamed that the shipwrecked man was rising out of the livid waves of the sea, and coming to snatch her from her husband’s arms.

      When William came in the morning, trembling and anxious, he found Madeleine still asleep. He took her gently in his arms. Madeleine awoke with a start and threw herself on his bosom, as if to take refuge there and tell him: “I am thine.” Then came the long kisses, and the passionate embraces. They both seemed to feel a need of abandoning themselves to each other’s caresses, to each other’s arms, so as to be convinced of the strength of their union.

      That afternoon, William went to arrange about the formalities of the marriage. When, at night, he announced to Geneviève that he was going to marry a young lady in the neighbourhood, the protestant looked at him with her malicious eyes, and said:

      “That will be better.”

      He saw that she knew everything. People had no doubt noticed him with Madeleine, and gossip travelled fast in the country, Geneviève’s remark made him hasten the wedding-day. A few weeks were enough. The lovers were married at the beginning of winter, almost secretly. Five or six inquisitive Véteuil folks alone watched them enter their carriage as they left the mayoralty and the church. When they were back at La Noiraude, they thanked their witnesses and shut themselves up. They were at home, united for life.

      CHAPTER VI.

      THE four years that followed were calm and happy. The newly-married couple spent them at La Noiraude. They had made plans, the first year, for travelling: they had wished to air their love in Italy or on the banks of the Rhine, as is the fashion. But they always held back at the moment of starting, finding it useless to go and seek so far away for a happiness which they had at home.

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