Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had

gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings

and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find

an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her

to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon

this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their

red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised

her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident,

that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and

she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.

What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of

shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was

past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to

herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking

resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she

was making.

Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy

of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of

turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself

to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by

an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had

not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow

home.

What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her

anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an

imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose

sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all

felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of

that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.

On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that

resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented

it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,

and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own

gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity

drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires.

She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better

right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised

sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and

she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she

was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024