Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales | Page 2

her. If he complains, she will not come again,
because it is impossible for her to get rid of her coachman. So, you see,
the coachman, and the footman, and Madame Z, and Madame X, and
all the others, who visit her house as they would a museum,--a museum
that never closes,--all the he's and all the she's who eat up her leisure
minute by minute and second by second, to whom she owes her time as
an employee owes his time to the State, simply because she belongs to
the world--all these persons are like the transparent and impassable
glass: they keep you from my love.
MME. DE SALLUS [_dryly_]
You seem upset to-day.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
No, no, but I hunger to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not?
Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn't it true? I spend my life in looking for
opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of
casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches--nothing more. We meet
on the avenue in the morning--a bow; we meet at your house, or at that
of some other acquaintance--twenty words; we dine somewhere at the
same table, too far from each other to talk, and I dare not even look at
you because of hostile eyes. Is that love? We are simply acquaintances.
MME. DE SALLUS
Then you would like to carry me off?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Unhappily, I cannot.
MME. DE SALLUS
Then what?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
I do not know. I only know this life is wearing me out.
MME. DE SALLUS

It is just because there are so many obstacles in the way of your love
that it does not fade.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Oh! Madeline, can you say that?
MME. DE SALLUS [_softening_]
Believe me, dear, if your love has to endure these hardships, it is
because it is not lawful love.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Well, I never met a woman as positive as you. Then you think that if
chance made me your husband, I should cease to love you?
MME. DE SALLUS
Not all at once, perhaps, but--eventually.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
What you say is revolting to me.
MME. DE SALLUS
Nevertheless, it is quite true. You know that when a confectioner hires
a greedy saleswoman he says to her, "Eat all the sweets you wish, my
dear." She stuffs herself for eight days, and then she is satisfied for the
rest of her life.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Ah! Indeed! But why do you include me in that class?
MME. DE SALLUS
Really, I do not know--perhaps as a joke!
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Please do not mock me.
MME. DE SALLUS
I say to myself, here is a man who is very much in love with me. So far
as I am concerned, I am perfectly free, morally, since for two years past
I have altogether ceased to please my husband. Now, since this man
loves me, why should I not love him?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
You are philosophic--and cruel.
MME. DE SALLUS
On the contrary, I have not been cruel. Of what do you complain?
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Stop! you anger me with this continual raillery. Ever since I began to
love you, you have tortured me in this manner, and now I do not even

know whether you have the slightest affection for me.
MME. DE SALLUS
Well, you must admit that I have always been--good-natured.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Oh, you have played a queer little game! From the day I first met you I
felt that you were coquetting with me, coquetting mysteriously,
obscurely, coquetting as only you can without showing it to others.
Little by little you conquered me with looks, with smiles, with
pressures of the hand, without compromising yourself, without
pledging yourself, without revealing yourself. You have been horribly
upright--and seductive. I have loved you with all my soul, yes,
sincerely and loyally, and to-day I do not know what feeling you have
in the depths of your heart, what thoughts you have hidden in your
brain; in fact, I know-I know nothing. I look at you, and I see a woman
who seems to have chosen me, and seems also to have forgotten that
she has chosen me. Does she love me, or is she tired of me? Has she
simply made an experiment--taken a lover in order to see, to know, to
taste,--without desire, hunger, or thirst? There are days when I ask
myself if among those who love you and who tell you so unceasingly
there is not one whom you really love.
MME. DE SALLUS
Good heavens! Really, there are some things into which it is not
necessary to inquire.
JACQUES DE RANDOL
Oh, how hard you are! Your tone tells