Fromont and Risler, vol 3 | Page 5

if she might continue to live thus in peace, when Frantz Risler suddenly arrived.
Simply from seeing him enter the room, she had realized that her repose was threatened, that an interview of the gravest importance was to take place between them.
Her plan was formed on the instant. She must at once put it into execution.
The summer-house that they entered contained one large, circular room with four windows, each looking out upon a different landscape; it was furnished for the purposes of summer siestas, for the hot hours when one seeks shelter from the sunlight and the noises of the garden. A broad, very low divan ran all around the wall. A small lacquered table, also very low, stood in the middle of the room, covered with odd numbers of society journals.
The hangings were new, and the Persian pattern-birds flying among bluish reeds--produced the effect of a dream in summer, ethereal figures floating before one's languid eyes. The lowered blinds, the matting on the floor, the Virginia jasmine clinging to the trellis-work outside, produced a refreshing coolness which was enhanced by the splashing in the river near by, and the lapping of its wavelets on the shore.
Sidonie sat down as soon as she entered the room, pushing aside her long white skirt, which sank like a mass of snow at the foot of the divan; and with sparkling eyes and a smile playing about her lips, bending her little head slightly, its saucy coquettishness heightened by the bow of ribbon on the side, she waited.
Frantz, pale as death, remained standing, looking about the room. After a moment he began:
"I congratulate you, Madame; you understand how to make yourself comfortable."
And in the next breath, as if he were afraid that the conversation, beginning at such a distance, would not arrive quickly enough at the point to which he intended to lead it, he added brutally:
"To whom do you owe this magnificence, to your lover or your husband?"
Without moving from the divan, without even raising her eyes to his, she answered:
"To both."
He was a little disconcerted by such self-possession.
"Then you confess that that man is your lover?"
"Confess it!--yes!"
Frantz gazed at her a moment without speaking. She, too, had turned pale, notwithstanding her calmness, and the eternal little smile no longer quivered at the corners of her mouth.
He continued:
"Listen to me, Sidonie! My brother's name, the name he gave his wife, is mine as well. Since Risler is so foolish, so blind as to allow the name to be dishonored by you, it is my place to defend it against your attacks. I beg you, therefore, to inform Monsieur Georges Fromont that he must change mistresses as soon as possible, and go elsewhere to ruin himself. If not--"
"If not?" queried Sidonie, who had not ceased to play with her rings while he was speaking.
"If not, I shall tell my brother what is going on in his house, and you will be surprised at the Risler whose acquaintance you will make then-- a man as violent and ungovernable as he usually is inoffensive. My disclosure will kill him perhaps, but you can be sure that he will kill you first."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Very well! let him kill me. What do I care for that?"
This was said with such a heartbroken, despondent air that Frantz, in spite of himself, felt a little pity for that beautiful, fortunate young creature, who talked of dying with such self-abandonment.
"Do you love him so dearly?" he said, in an indefinably milder tone. "Do you love this Fromont so dearly that you prefer to die rather than renounce him?"
She drew herself up hastily.
"I? Love that fop, that doll, that silly girl in men's clothes? Nonsense!--I took him as I would have taken any other man."
"Why?"
"Because I couldn't help it, because I was mad, because I had and still have in my heart a criminal love, which I am determined to tear out, no matter at what cost."
She had risen and was speaking with her eyes in his, her lips near his, trembling from head to foot.
A criminal love?--Whom did she love, in God's name?
Frantz was afraid to question her.
Although suspecting nothing as yet, he had a feeling that that glance, that breath, leaning toward him, were about to make some horrible disclosure.
But his office of judge made it necessary for him to know all.
"Who is it?" he asked.
She replied in a stifled voice:
"You know very well that it is you."
She was his brother's wife.
For two years he had not thought of her except as a sister. In his eyes his brother's wife in no way resembled his former fiancee, and it would have been a crime to recognize in a single feature of her face the woman to whom he had formerly so often said, "I love you."
And now it was