but
it is not possible. I see that lovers never separate kindly. Later, you
will judge me better. Farewell!"
He looked at her. Now his face expressed more pain than anger. She never
had seen his eyes so dry and so black. It seemed as if he had grown old
in an hour.
"I prefer to tell you in advance. It will be impossible for me to see you
again. You are not a woman whom one may meet after one has been loved by
her. You are not like others. You have a poison of your own, which you
have given to me, and which I feel in me, in my veins. Why have I known
you?"
She looked at him kindly.
"Farewell! Say to yourself that I am not worthy of being regretted so
much."
Then, when he saw that she placed her hand on the latch of the door, when
he felt at that gesture that he was to lose her, that he should never
have her again, he shouted. He forgot everything. There remained in him
only the dazed feeling of a great misfortune accomplished, of an
irreparable calamity. And from the depth of his stupor a desire ascended.
He desired to possess again the woman who was leaving him and who would
never return. He drew her to him. He desired her, with all the strength
of his animal nature. She resisted with all the force of her will, which
was free and on the alert. She disengaged herself, crumpled, torn,
without even having been afraid.
He understood that everything was useless; he realized she was no longer
for him, because she belonged to another. As his suffering returned, he
pushed her out of the door.
She remained a moment in the corridor, proudly waiting for a word.
But he shouted again, "Go!" and shut the door violently.
On the Via Alfieri, she saw again the pavilion in the rear of the
courtyard where pale grasses grew. She found it silent and tranquil,
faithful, with its goats and nymphs, to the lovers of the time of the
Grand Duchess Eliza. She felt at once freed from the painful, brutal
world, and transported to ages wherein she had not known the sadness of
life. At the foot of the stairs, the steps of which were covered with
roses, Dechartre was waiting. She threw herself in his arms. He carried
her inert, like a precious trophy before which he had become pallid and
trembling. She enjoyed, her eyelids half closed, the superb humiliation
of being a beautiful prey. Her fatigue, her sadness, her disgust with the
day, the reminiscence of violence, her regained liberty, the need of
forgetting, remains of fright, e
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