"Yes," he said at last.
Then she readjusted herself and without saying a word quitted the room. In silence he accompanied her to the entrance. She opened the door, turned around, took his hand and very lightly brushed it with her lips.
He stood there stupidly, not knowing what to make of her behaviour.
"What does she mean?" he exclaimed, returning to the room, putting the furniture back in place and smoothing the disordered carpet. "Heavens, I wish I could as easily restore order to my brain. Let me think, if I can. What is she after? Because, of course, she has something in view. She does not want our relation to culminate in the act itself. Does she really fear disillusion, as she claims? Is she really thinking how grotesque the amorous somersaults are? Or is she, as I believe, a melancholy and terrible player-around-the-edges, thinking only of herself? Well, her obscene selfishness is one of those complicated sins that have to be shriven by the very highest confessor. She's a plain teaser!
"I don't know. Incubacy enters into this. She admits-so placidly!-that in dream she cohabits at will with dead or living beings. Is she Satanizing, and is this some of the work of Canon Docre? He's a friend of hers.
"So many riddles impossible to solve. What is the meaning of this unexpected invitation for tomorrow night? Does she wish to yield nowhere except in her own home? Does she feel more at ease there, or does she think the propinquity of her husband will render the sin more piquant? Does she loathe Chantelouve, and is this a meditated vengeance, or does she count on the fear of danger to spur our senses?
"After all, I think it is probably a final coquetry, an appetizer before the repast. And women are so funny anyway! She probably thinks these delays and subterfuges are necessary to differentiate her from a cocotte. Or perhaps there is a physical necessity for stalling me off another day."
He sought other reasons but could find none.
"Deep down in my heart," he said, vexed in spite of himself by this rebuff, "I know I have been an imbecile. I ought to have acted the cave man and paid no attention to her supplications and lies. I ought to have taken violent possession of her lips and breast. Then it would be finished, whereas now I must begin at the beginning again, and God damn her! I have other things to do.
"Who knows whether she isn't laughing at me this very moment? Perhaps she wanted me to be more violent and bold-but no, her soul-sick voice was not feigned, her poor eyes did not simulate bewilderment, and then what would she have meant by that respectful kiss-for there was an impalpable shade of respect and gratitude in that kiss which she planted on my hand!"
She was too much for him. "Meanwhile, in this hurly-burly I have forgotten my refreshments. Suppose I take off my shoes, now that I am alone, for my feet are swollen from parading up and down the room. Suppose I do better yet and go to bed, for I am incapable of working or reading," and he drew back the covers.
"Decidedly, nothing happens the way one foresees it, yet my plan of attack wasn't badly thought out," he said, crawling in. With a sigh he blew out the lamp, and the cat, reassured, passed over him, lighter than a breath, and curled up without a sound.
CHAPTER XI
Contrary to his expectations, he slept all night, with clenched fists, and woke next morning quite calm, even gay. The scene of the night before, which ought to have exacerbated his senses, produced exactly the opposite effect. The truth is that Durtal was not of those who are attracted by difficulties. He always made one hardy effort to surmount them, then when that failed he would withdraw, with no desire to renew the combat. If Mme. Chantelouve thought to entice him by delays, she had miscalculated. This morning, already, he was weary of the comedy.
His reflections began to be slightly tinged with bitterness. He was angry at the woman for having wished to keep him in suspense, and he was angry at himself for having permitted her to make a fool of him. Then certain expressions, the impertinence of which had not struck him at first, chilled him now. "Her nervous trick of laughing, which sometimes caught her in public places," then her declaration that she did not need his permission, nor even his person, in order to possess him, seemed to him unbecoming, to say the least, and uncalled for, as he had not run after her nor indeed made any advances to her at all.
"I will fix you," he said, "when I get some hold over you."
But in the calm awakening of this morning the spell of the woman had relaxed. Resolutely he thought, "Keep two dates with her. This one tonight at her house. It won't count, because nothing can be done. For I intend neither to allow myself to be assaulted nor to attempt an assault. I certainly have no desire to be caught by Chantelouve in flagrante delicto, and probably get into a shooting scrape and be haled into police court. Have her here once. If she does not yield then, why, the matter is closed. She can go and tickle somebody else."
And he made a hearty breakfast, and sat down to his writing table and ran over the scattered notes for his book.
"I had got," he said, glancing at his last chapter, "to where the alchemic experiments and diabolic evocations have proved unavailing. Prelati, Blanchet, all the sorcerers and sorcerers' helpers whom the Marshal has about him, admit that to bring Satan to him Gilles must make over his soul and body to the Devil or commit crimes.
"Gilles refuses to alienate his existence and sell his soul, but he contemplates murder without any horror. This man, so brave on the battlefield, so courageous when he accompanied Jeanne d'Arc, trembles before the Devil and is afraid when he thinks of eternity and of Christ. The same is true of his accomplices. He has made them swear on the Testament to keep the secret of the confounding turpitudes which the château conceals, and he can be sure that not one will violate the oath, for, in the Middle Ages, the most reckless of freebooters would not commit the inexpiable sin of deceiving God.
"At the same time that his alchemists abandon their unfruitful furnaces, Gilles begins a course of systematic gluttony, and his flesh, set on fire by the essences of inordinate potations and spiced dishes, seethes in tumultuous eruption.
"Now, there are no women in the château. Gilles appears to have despised the sex ever since leaving the court. After experience of the ribalds of the camps and frequentation, with Xaintrailles and La Hire, of the prostitutes of Charles VII, it seems that a dislike for the feminine form came over him. Like others whose ideal of concupiscence is deteriorated and deviated, he certainly comes to be disgusted by the delicacy of the grain of the skin of women and by that odour of femininity which all sodomists abhor.
"He depraves the choir boys who are under his authority. He chose them in the first place, these little psaltry ministrants, for their beauty, and 'beautiful as angels' they are. They are the only ones he loves, the only ones he spares in his murderous transports.
"But soon infantile pollution seems to him an insipid delicacy. The law of Satanism which demands that the elect of Evil, once started, must go the whole way, is once more fulfilled. Gilles's soul must become thoroughly cankered, a red tabernacle, that in it the Very Low may dwell at ease.
"The litanies of lust arise in an atmosphere that is like the wind over a slaughter house. The first victim is a very small boy whose name we do not know. Gilles disembowels him, and, cutting off the hands and tearing out the eyes and heart, carries these members into Prelati's chamber. The two men offer them, with passionate objurgations, to the Devil, who holds his peace. Gilles, confounded, flees. Prelati rolls up the poor remains in linen and, trembling, goes out at night to bury them in consecrated ground beside a chapel dedicated to Saint Vincent.
"Gilles preserves the blood of this child to write formulas of evocation and conjurements. It manures a horrible crop. Not long afterward the Marshal reaps the most abundant harvest of crimes that has ever been sown.