"But what did I do?" he asked, his eyelids wavering.
She explained.
He rose from his chair unsteadily.
She told him to sit down again, and he obeyed as though in a dream.
"I can go now," she said.
"Wait one moment," he murmured.
"I ask pardon.
I should not know how to thank you.
You are truly too good.
Will you wait one moment?"
His tone was one of supplication.
He gazed at her, a little dazzled by the light and by her.
The lamp and the candle illuminated the lower part of her face, theatrically, and showed the texture of her blue flannel peignoir; the pattern of a part of the lace collar was silhouetted in shadow on her cheek.
Her face was flushed, and her hair hung down unconfined.
Evidently he could not recover from his excusable astonishment at the apparition of such a figure in his room.
"What is it--now?" she said.
The faint, quizzical emphasis which she put on the 'now' indicated the essential of her thought.
The sight of him touched her and filled her with a womanly sympathy.
But that sympathy was only the envelope of her disdain of him.
She could not admire weakness.
She could but pity it with a pity in which scorn was mingled.
Her instinct was to treat him as a child.
He had failed in human dignity.
And it seemed to her as if she had not previously been quite certain whether she could not love him, but that now she was quite certain.
She was close to him. She saw the wounds of a soul that could not hide its wounds, and she resented the sight.
She was hard. She would not make allowances.
And she revelled in her hardness.
Contempt--a good-natured, kindly, forgiving contempt--that was the kernel of the sympathy which exteriorly warmed her!
Contempt for the lack of self-control which had resulted in this swift degeneration of a man into a tortured victim!
Contempt for the lack of perspective which magnified a mere mushroom passion till it filled the whole field of life!
Contempt for this feminine slavery to sentiment!
She felt that she might have been able to give herself to Chirac as one gives a toy to an infant. But of loving him ...!
No!
She was conscious of an immeasurable superiority to him, for she was conscious of the freedom of a strong mind.
"I wanted to tell you," said he, "I am going away."
"Where?" she asked.
"Out of Paris."
"Out of Paris?
How?"
"By balloon!
My journal ...! It is an affair of great importance. You understand.
I offered myself.
What would you?"
"It is dangerous," she observed, waiting to see if he would put on the silly air of one who does not understand fear.
"Oh!" the poor fellow muttered with a fatuous intonation and snapping of the fingers.
"That is all the same to me.
Yes, it is dangerous.
Yes, it is dangerous!" he repeated.
"But what would you ...?
For me ...!"