'Yes?' he said in a controlled voice.
'Won't you – we shall not meet again – won't you kiss me before you go?'
She thought he would have sprung towards her. The impulse was written so clearly, almost palpably on his face. But he controlled himself with an effort which whitened the knuckles of the brown hand still holding the ivory door knob and brought a sudden flash of anger into his eyes.
'Can't you understand?' he said, through clenched teeth. 'What do you think would happen at this moment if I were to lay so much as a finger on you? In another moment, we should be lovers and how could I tear myself away from you then? Before I left this room, I should have lost all respect for myself – and for you, too, perhaps. I should have become your slave… and for that I should not forgive you.'
Marianne had raised herself to hold out her hands to him, but now she sank back, defeated, on her pillows:
'Go, then… Go, quickly! Because I am going to cry and I would not have you see my tears.'
She looked so piteous, so defenceless, that even as she begged him to go Jason turned and, with the irrationality of love, would have gone back to her.
'Marianne—'
'No! If you have any love for me at all, please go! Can't you see that I can't bear any more? I was stupid, I see that now. I should have realized sooner, I should have understood my own feelings, but since it is all lost now, irrecoverably, it is best to end it quickly. Go back to your wife, since you believe you must be faithful to her, and leave me alone…'
And as Jason still hesitated at the door, torn by the misery and anger in her voice, she cried fiercely: 'Go away! What are you waiting for? Do you want me to make a complete fool of myself?'
He did go then, without pausing even to close the door behind him. Marianne heard his boots clatter on the stairs, then die away, and, with a gasp of misery, she closed her eyes and let the tears she had been holding back so desperately, stream down her face. Yet even in her wretchedness she was conscious of a feeling of absurdity which shocked and frightened her a little. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit that the elevated moral plane on which Jason appeared to exist seemed to her rather too high. For herself, she would have felt neither shame nor remorse in giving herself to him. Surely, it was absurd to be saying eternal farewells at the very moment they had realized their love for one another? That was how Fortunée would look at it, certainly. To one with her compliant moral code and declared belief in the precept of 'all for love', such a scene as had just taken place between Marianne and Jason would appear the height of the ridiculous. Goodness, how she would laugh, and what mockery she would heap on Marianne! And Marianne could not find it in her heart to blame her. It was this which frightened her, her own instinctive, shameful wish that Jason had united them in body as they were already in their hearts, that he had not chosen flight, however glorious and however much in keeping with his Huguenot blood and American upbringing, in preference to the joys beyond all price two lovers find in each other's arms. Had she, all unknowing, so far adopted Fortunée's outlook on life? Or was she, Marianne, one of those women, so infinitely less complex than she had ever realized, for whom to love a man and to belong to him was one and the same, utterly simple and natural thing?
No doubt it was highly complimentary to be placed on a pedestal in the most secret corner of a man's heart in the enviable position of an untouchable divinity, but Marianne thought she would have preferred rather less worship and more passion. Remembering her abortive wedding night, she told herself that Jason had changed a great deal. At Selton, he had been perfectly willing to make love to a young woman who had been married only hours before, even to take her husband's place in the bridal chamber. What had brought about this extraordinary access of puritanism? It was certainly ill-timed, to say the least. Supposing, as Napoleon was in the habit of claiming, that love's greatest triumph lay in flight, then Jason had indubitably won all along the line but Marianne could have wished that this model victory had not left her with such a dismal feeling of defeat. She found herself wondering if he had fled in order to sublimate his love – or prompted by the instinctive longing of every married man for peace and quiet at home, safe alike from passion and domestic strife. That Pilar was evidently as jealous as a cat and rather than cross her Jason seemed prepared to abandon, like an unwanted parcel, the woman he claimed to adore. And she, Marianne, had accepted it! She had even, for an instant, admired him for his lofty sentiments! She had even allowed him to reject her innocently offered kiss with as much evidence of loathing as if it had been the most insidious of love potions! What did he expect her to do now? Sink back into her pillows and wait for death to earn her a place among the legendary heroines who died for love and a less lasting memorial, like the faint scent of faded flowers, in Jason's own memory? Oh no, it would be too stupid, too—
At this point in her reflections, she was prevented from lashing herself into a further fury by the lighthearted entrance of Madame Hamelin. The Creole smiled coaxingly: 'Well? Happy?'
It was not the most felicitous of words. Marianne scowled: 'No. He loves me too much to deceive his wife! So we said goodbye for ever!'
There was a moment's astonished silence, then Fortunée reacted precisely as Marianne had foreseen she would. She let out a hysterical wail of laughter and collapsed heavily on to a small sofa which groaned under the shock. She went on laughing so helplessly and for so long that in the end Marianne began to feel that she was rather overdoing things.
'You think it's funny?' she said in an aggrieved voice. 'Oh! Oh, my goodness, yes!… Oh, dear!… It's priceless!… And perfectly ridiculous!'
'Ridiculous?'
'Yes, indeed. Quite ridiculous!' Fortunée's hilarity gave way abruptly to the most earnest indignation. 'It's more than ridiculous. It's farcical, grotesque! What are you made of, the two of you? Here is a splendid, charming, fascinating man (and I am allowed to be a judge!) for whom, by all accounts, you represent the One and Only Woman with a capital W, and who longs for you all the more fiercely because he can't bring himself to speak… And here are you, head over ears in love with him – for you do love him, don't you?'
'I have only just found it out,' Marianne confessed, 'but it is true. I do love him – more than anything in the world!'
'I could have sworn you did, though it has taken you long enough to discover it! Very well, you love him… and all the pair of you can find to do about it is to say – what was your absurd phrase? – Good-bye for Ever! Wasn't that it?'
That was it.'
Well, the answer's fairly obvious. Either you aren't so passionately in love as you like to think, or neither of you deserves to live!'
'He has a wife… and I have a husband!'
'Well, as to that, so have I a husband. Not much of a one, it's true, but I have. Somewhere, there is a Hamelin, just as somewhere there is a Prince Sant'Anna. But if you—'
'Fortunée, you don't understand. It's not the same thing at all.'
'And why isn't it the same thing?' Fortunée inquired, with deceptive sweetness. 'You think, don't you, that because when I want a man I take him, without any question, I must be a lightskirt, a loose woman? Well, I don't deceive myself and I'm not ashamed of it.' Her expression grew suddenly grave. 'You see, Marianne, youth is a great gift, too wonderful and too short for us to waste it. Love, too, the real, true love that everyone hopes for and yet no one dares to believe in, a love like that is worth something more than just sitting on opposite sides of the ocean dreaming regretfully of what might have been. When we are old, it will be better, believe me, to have memories to live on rather than regrets. And don't tell me you don't agree with me,' Fortunée concluded briskly. 'Your regrets are written all over your face!'