Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

"Who do you mean?"

"I can not tell you."

"Then you are lying to me."

Marguerite rose and went toward the door. I could not behold this silent

and expressive sorrow without being touched, when I compared in my mind

this pale and weeping woman with the madcap who had made fun of me at

the Opera Comique.

"You shall not go," I said, putting myself in front of the door.

"Why?"

"Because, in spite of what you have done to me, I love you always, and I

want you to stay here."

"To turn me out to-morrow? No; it is impossible. Our destinies are

separate; do not try to reunite them. You will despise me perhaps, while

now you can only hate me."

"No, Marguerite," I cried, feeling all my love and all my desire

reawaken at the contact of this woman. "No, I will forget everything,

and we will be happy as we promised one another that we would be."

Marguerite shook her head doubtfully, and said: "Am I not your slave, your dog? Do with me what you will. Take me; I am

yours."

And throwing off her cloak and hat, she flung them on the sofa, and

began hurriedly to undo the front of her dress, for, by one of those

reactions so frequent in her malady, the blood rushed to her head and

stifled her. A hard, dry cough followed.

"Tell my coachman," she said, "to go back with the carriage."

I went down myself and sent him away. When I returned Marguerite was

lying in front of the fire, and her teeth chattered with the cold.

I took her in my arms. I undressed her, without her making a movement,

and carried her, icy cold, to the bed. Then I sat beside her and tried

to warm her with my caresses. She did not speak a word, but smiled at

me.

It was a strange night. All Marguerite's life seemed to have passed into

the kisses with which she covered me, and I loved her so much that in

my transports of feverish love I asked myself whether I should not kill

her, so that she might never belong to another.

A month of love like that, and there would have remained only the corpse

of heart or body.

The dawn found us both awake. Marguerite was livid white. She did not

speak a word. From time to time, big tears rolled from her eyes, and

stayed upon her cheeks, shining like diamonds. Her thin arms opened,

from time to time, to hold me fast, and fell back helplessly upon the

bed.