Monsieur De Camors | Page 9

embrace more fervent than usual.
The dinner was gay. In the atmosphere was that subtle suggestion of
coming danger of which both Camors and Madame Lescande felt the
exhilarating influence. Their excitement, as yet innocent, employed
itself in those lively sallies--those brilliant combats at the barriers--that
ever precede the more serious conflict. About nine o'clock the headache

of Madame Mursois--perhaps owing to the cigar they had allowed
Camors--became more violent. She declared she could endure it no
longer, and must retire to her chamber. Camors wished to withdraw,
but his carriage had not yet arrived and Madame Mursois insisted that
he should wait for it.
"Let my daughter amuse you with a little music until then," she added.
Left alone with her guest, the younger lady seemed embarrassed. "What
shall I play for you?" she asked, in a constrained voice, taking her seat
at the piano.
"Oh! anything--play a waltz," answered Camors, absently.
The waltz finished, an awkward silence ensued. To break it she arose
hesitatingly; then clasping her hands together exclaimed, "It seems to
me there is a storm. Do you not think so?" She approached the window,
opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. In a second Camors was at
her side.
The night was beautifully clear. Before them stretched the sombre
shadow of the wood, while nearer trembling rays of moonlight slept
upon the lawn.
How still all was! Their trembling hands met and for a moment did not
separate.
"Juliette!" whispered the young man, in a low, broken voice. She
shuddered, repelled the arm that Camors passed round her, and hastily
reentered the room.
"Leave me, I pray you!" she cried, with an impetuous gesture of her
hand, as she sank upon the sofa, and buried her face in her hands.
Of course Camors did not obey. He seated himself by her.
In a little while Juliette awoke from her trance; but she awoke a lost
woman!

How bitter was that awakening! She measured at a first glance the
depth of the awful abyss into which she had suddenly plunged. Her
husband, her mother, her infant, whirled like spectres in the mad chaos
of her brain.
Sensible of the anguish of an irreparable wrong, she rose, passed her
hand vacantly across her brow, and muttering, "Oh, God! oh, God!"
peered vainly into the dark for light--hope--refuge! There was none!
Her tortured soul cast herself utterly on that of her lover. She turned her
swimming eyes on him and said:
"How you must despise me!"
Camors, half kneeling on the carpet near her, kissed her hand
indifferently and half raised his shoulders in sign of denial. "Is it not
so?" she repeated. "Answer me, Louis."
His face wore a strange, cruel smile--"Do not insist on an answer, I
pray you," he said.
"Then I am right? You do despise me?"
Camors turned himself abruptly full toward her, looked straight in her
face, and said, in a cold, hard voice, "I do!"
To this cruel speech the poor child replied by a wild cry that seemed to
rend her, while her eyes dilated as if under the influence of strong
poison. Camors strode across the room, then returned and stood by her
as he said, in a quick, violent tone:
"You think I am brutal? Perhaps I am, but that can matter little now.
After the irreparable wrong I have done you, there is one service--and
only one which I can now render you. I do it now, and tell you the truth.
Understand me clearly; women who fall do not judge themselves more
harshly than their accomplices judge them. For myself, what would you
have me think of you?

"To his misfortune and my shame, I have known your husband since
his boyhood. There is not a drop of blood in his veins that does not
throb for you; there is not a thought of his day nor a dream of his night
that is not yours; your every comfort comes from his sacrifices--your
every joy from his exertion! See what he is to you!
"You have only seen my name in the journals; you have seen me ride
by your window; I have talked a few times with you, and you yield to
me in one moment the whole of his life with your own--the whole of
his happiness with your own.
"I tell you, woman, every man like me, who abuses your vanity and
your weakness and afterward tells you he esteems you--lies! And if
after all you still believe he loves you, you do yourself fresh injury. No:
we soon learn to hate those irksome ties that become duties where we
only sought pleasures; and the first effort after they are formed is to
shatter them.
"As for the rest: women like you are not made