force
incited me to utter, and those terrified words which escaped from her
pale lips, froze me again, and penetrated to my marrow as if they had
been some piercing wind.

In spite of it all, I was in full possession of my reason, I was not in
a passion, and I could not have looked like a fool.

What could she have seen unusual in my eyes that frightened her, what
inflections were there in my voice for such an idea suddenly to arise in
her brain? Suppose she had not make a mistake, suppose I no longer knew
what I was saying nor what I was doing, and really had that terrible
malady that she had mentioned, and which I cannot repeat!

It seems to me now as if I could see myself in a mirror of anguish,
altogether changed, as if my head were a complete void at times and
became something sonorous, and then was struck violent, prolonged blows
from a heavy clapper, as if it had been a bell, which fills it with
tumultuous deafening vibrations, from a kind of loud tocsin and from
monotonous peals, that were succeeded by the silence of the grave.

And the voice of recollection, a voice which tells me Elaine's
mysterious history, which speaks to me only of her, which recalls that
initial night, that strange night of happiness and of grief, when I
doubted her fidelity, when I doubted her heart as well as I did herself,
passes slowly through this silence all at once, like the voice of
distant music.

Alas! Suppose she had not made a mistake!

PART XXII

I must be an object of hatred to her, and I left home without writing
her a line, without trying to see her, without wishing her good-bye. She
may pity me or she may hate me, but she certainly does not love me any
longer, and I have myself buried that love, for which I would formerly
have given my whole life. As she is young and pretty, however, Elaine
will soon console herself for these passing troubles with some soul that
is the shadow of her own, and will replace me, if she has not done that
already, and will seek happiness in adultery.

What are she and her lover plotting? What will they try to do to prevent
me from interfering with them? What snares will they set for me so that
I may go and end my miserable life in some dungeon, from which there is
no release?

But that is impossible; it can never be; Elaine belongs to me altogether
and forever; she is my property, my chattel, my happiness. I adore her,
I want her all to myself, _even though she be guilty_, and I wil