f
with. The old doctor treated me so strangely, that I often felt inclined
to run out of the consulting room. One day he put me to sleep, and
perhaps it was he who...."

And not having the courage to finish the lamentable sentence, she went
and drowned herself, and the parents had the doctor, who had forgotten
all about that old story, arrested, and in his examination he confessed
the crime....

With an evil look on her face, such as I have never seen before, and
with vibrating nostrils, Elaine exclaimed in a hard voice:

"To think that such a monster was not sent to the guillotine!"

_Can she also have suffered the same thing?_

PART XV

But unless Elaine was a monster of wickedness, unless she had no heart
and knew how to lie and to deceive as well as a girl whose only pleasure
consists in making all those who are captivated by her beauty, play the
laughable part of dupes, unless that mask of youth concealed a most
polluted soul, if there had been any unhappy episode in her life, if she
had endured the horrors of violation, and gone through all the horrors
of desolation, fear and shame, would not something visible, something
disgusting, attacks of low spirits, and of gloom, and disgust with
everything have remained, which would have shown the progress of some
mysterious malady, the gradual weakening of the brain and the
enlargement of an incurable wound?

She would have cried occasionally, would have been lost in thought and
become confused when spoken to, she would scarcely have taken any
interest in anything that happened, either at home or elsewhere. Kisses
would have become torture to her, and would have only excited a fever of
revolt in her inanimate being.

I fancy that I can see such a victim of inexorable Destiny, as if she
were a consumptive woman whose days are numbered, and who knows it. She
smiles feebly when any one tries to get her out of her torpor, to amuse
her and to instill a little hope into her soul. She does not speak, but
remains sitting silently at a window for whole days together, and one
might think that her large, dreamy eyes are looking at strange sights in
the depths of the sky, and see a long, attractive road there. But
Elaine, on the contrary, thought of nothing but of amusing herself, of
enjoying life and of laughing, and added all the tricks of a girl who
has just left school, to her seductive grace of a young woman. She
carried men away with her; she was most seductive, and