Oh! white veils, that hide the blushes, the half-closed eyes and the
trembling lips of some _Psyche_, oh! little hands which you raised in
an attitude of prayer toward the lighted and decorated altar, oh!
innocent and charming questions, which delighted me to the depths of my
being, and which seemed to me to be an absolute promise of happiness,
were you nothing but a lie, and a wonderfully well acted piece of
trickery?

But was I not wrong, and an idiot, to allow such thoughts to take
possession of me, and to poison my deep, absorbing love, which was now
my only law and my only object, by odious and foolish suggestions? What
an abject and miserable nature I must have, for such a simple,
affectionate, natural question to disturb me so, when I ought
immediately to have replied to Elaine's question, with all my heart that
belonged to hear:

"Yes, ten or twenty years, because you are my happiness, my desire, my
love!"

PART VII

I did not choose to wait until she woke up, I sprang from the bed, where
Elaine was still sleeping, with her disheveled hair lying on the
lace-edged pillows. Her complexion was almost transparent, her lips were
half open, as if she were dreaming, and she seemed so overcome with
sleep, that I felt much emotion when I looked at her.

I drank four glasses of mild champagne, one after the other, as quickly
as I could, but it did not quench my thirst. I was feverish and would
have given anything in the world for something to interest me suddenly
and have absorbed me and lifted me out of that slough in which my heart
and my brain were being engulfed, as if in a quicksand. I did not
venture to avow to myself what was making me so dejected, what was
torturing me and driving me mad with grief, or to scrutinize the muddy
bottom of my present thoughts sincerely and courageously, to question
myself and to pull myself together.

It would have been so odious, so infamous, to harbor such suspicions
unjustly, to accuse that adorable creature who was not yet twenty, whom
I loved, and _who seemed to love me_, without having certain proofs,
that I felt that I was blushing at the idea that I had any doubt of her
innocence. Ah! Why did I marry?

I had a sufficient income to enable me to live as I liked, to pay
beautiful women who pleased me, whom I chanced to meet, and who amused
me, and who sometimes gave me unexpected proofs of affection, but I had
never allowed myself to be caught altogether, and in order