One of her hands on her lap moved slightly as though his words had fallen there and she had thrown them off on the floor. But her silence encouraged him. Possibly it meant remorse--perhaps fear. Was she thunderstruck by his attitude? . . . Her eyelids dropped. He seemed to understand ever so much--everything! Very well--but she must be made to suffer. It was due to him. He understood everything, yet he judged it indispensable to say with an obvious affectation of civility:
"I don't understand--be so good as to . . ."
She stood up. For a second he believed she intended to go away, and it was as though someone had jerked a string attached to his heart. It hurt. He remained open-mouthed and silent. But she made an irresolute step towards him, and instinctively he moved aside. They stood before one another, and the fragments of the torn letter lay between them--at their feet--like an insurmountable obstacle, like a sign of eternal separation! Around them three other couples stood still and face to face, as if waiting for a signal to begin some action--a struggle, a dispute, or a dance.
She said: "Don't--Alvan!" and there was something that resembled a warning in the pain of her tone. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to pierce her with his gaze. Her voice touched him. He had aspirations after magnanimity, generosity, superiority--interrupted, however, by flashes of indignation and anxiety--frightful anxiety to know how far she had gone. She looked down at the torn paper. Then she looked up, and their eyes met again, remained fastened together, like an unbreakable bond, like a clasp of eternal complicity; and the decorous silence, the pervading quietude of the house which enveloped this meeting of their glances became for a moment inexpressibly vile, for he was afraid she would say too much and make magnanimity impossible, while behind the profound mournfulness of her face there was a regret--a regret of things done--the regret of delay--the thought that if she had only turned back a week sooner--a day sooner--only an hour sooner. . . . They were afraid to hear again the sound of their voices; they did not know what they might say--perhaps something that could not be recalled; and words are more terrible than facts. But the tricky fatality that lurks in obscure impulses spoke through Alvan Hervey's lips suddenly; and he heard his own voice with the excited and sceptical curiosity with which one listens to actors'
voices speaking on the stage in the strain of a poignant situation.
"If you have forgotten anything . . . of course . . . I . . ."Her eyes blazed at him for an instant; her lips trembled--and then she also became the mouth-piece of the mysterious force forever hovering near us; of that perverse inspiration, wandering capricious and uncontrollable, like a gust of wind.
"What is the good of this, Alvan? . . . You know why I came back.
. . . You know that I could not . . . "
He interrupted her with irritation.
"Then! what's this?" he asked, pointing downwards at the torn letter.
"That's a mistake," she said hurriedly, in a muffled voice.
This answer amazed him. He remained speechless, staring at her. He had half a mind to burst into a laugh. It ended in a smile as involuntary as a grimace of pain.
"A mistake . . ." he began, slowly, and then found himself unable to say another word.
"Yes . . . it was honest," she said very low, as if speaking to the memory of a feeling in a remote past.
He exploded.
"Curse your honesty! . . . Is there any honesty in all this! . . .
When did you begin to be honest? Why are you here? What are you now?
. . . Still honest? . . . "
He walked at her, raging, as if blind; during these three quick strides he lost touch of the material world and was whirled interminably through a kind of empty universe made up of nothing but fury and anguish, till he came suddenly upon her face--very close to his. He stopped short, and all at once seemed to remember something heard ages ago.
"You don't know the meaning of the word," he shouted.
She did not flinch. He perceived with fear that everything around him was still. She did not move a hair's breadth; his own body did not stir. An imperturbable calm enveloped their two motionless figures, the house, the town, all the world--and the trifling tempest of his feelings. The violence of the short tumult within him had been such as could well have shattered all creation; and yet nothing was changed.
He faced his wife in the familiar room in his own house. It had not fallen. And right and left all the innumerable dwellings, standing shoulder to shoulder, had resisted the shock of his passion, had presented, unmoved, to the loneliness of his trouble, the grim silence of walls, the impenetrable and polished discretion of closed doors and curtained windows. Immobility and silence pressed on him, assailed him, like two accomplices of the immovable and mute woman before his eyes. He was suddenly vanquished. He was shown his impotence. He was soothed by the breath of a corrupt resignation coming to him through the subtle irony of the surrounding peace.
He said with villainous composure:
"At any rate it isn't enough for me. I want to know more--if you're going to stay.""There is nothing more to tell," she answered, sadly.
It struck him as so very true that he did not say anything. She went on:
"You wouldn't understand. . . ."
"No?" he said, quietly. He held himself tight not to burst into howls and imprecations.
"I tried to be faithful . . ." she began again.
"And this?" he exclaimed, pointing at the fragments of her letter.
"This--this is a failure," she said.
"I should think so," he muttered, bitterly.
