"I doubt nothing if you will only grant me--""Hush!" she cried, hearing a note of true passion in his voice, "the open air is decidedly disagreeing with us; let us return to the coach."That vehicle soon came up; they took their places and drove on several miles in total silence.Both had matter for reflection, but henceforth their eyes no longer feared to meet.Each now seemed to have an equal interest in observing the other, and in mutually hiding important secrets; but for all that they were drawn together by one and the same impulse, which now, as a result of this interview, assumed the dimensions of a passion.They recognized in each other qualities which promised to heighten all the pleasures to be derived from either their contest or their union.Perhaps both of them, living a life of adventure, had reached the singular moral condition in which, either from weariness or in defiance of fate, the mind rejects serious reflection and flings itself on chance in pursuing an enterprise precisely because the issues of chance are unknown, and the interest of expecting them vivid.The moral nature, like the physical nature, has its abysses into which strong souls love to plunge, risking their future as gamblers risk their fortune.Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the young marquis had obtained a revelation of each other's minds as a consequence of this interview, and their intercourse thus took rapid strides, for the sympathy of their souls succeeded to that of their senses.Besides, the more they felt fatally drawn to each other, the more eager they were to study the secret action of their minds.The so-called Vicomte de Bauvan, surprised at the seriousness of the strange girl's ideas, asked himself how she could possibly combine such acquired knowledge of life with so much youth and freshness.He thought he discovered an extreme desire to appear chaste in the modesty and reserve of her attitudes.He suspected her of playing a part; he questioned the nature of his own pleasure; and ended by choosing to consider her a clever actress.He was right; Mademoiselle de Verneuil, like other women of the world, grew the more reserved the more she felt the warmth of her own feelings, assuming with perfect naturalness the appearance of prudery, beneath which such women veil their desires.They all wish to offer themselves as virgins on love's altar; and if they are not so, the deception they seek to practise is at least a homage which they pay to their lovers.These thoughts passed rapidly through the mind of the young man and gratified him.In fact, for both, this mutual examination was an advance in their intercourse, and the lover soon came to that phase of passion in which a man finds in the defects of his mistress a reason for loving her the more.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil was thoughtful.Perhaps her imagination led her over a greater extent of the future than that of the young /emigre/, who was merely following one of the many impulses of his life as a man; whereas Marie was considering a lifetime, thinking to make it beautiful, and to fill it with happiness and with grand and noble sentiments.Happy in such thoughts, more in love with her ideal than with the actual reality, with the future rather than with the present, she desired now to return upon her steps so as to better establish her power.In this she acted instinctively, as all women act.Having agreed with her soul that she would give herself wholly up, she wished--if we may so express it--to dispute every fragment of the gift; she longed to take back from the past all her words and looks and acts and make them more in harmony with the dignity of a woman beloved.Her eyes at times expressed a sort of terror as she thought of the interview just over, in which she had shown herself aggressive.But as she watched the face before her, instinct with power, and felt that a being so strong must also be generous, she glowed at the thought that her part in life would be nobler than that of most women, inasmuch as her lover was a man of character, a man condemned to death, who had come to risk his life in making war against the Republic.The thought of occupying such a soul to the exclusion of all rivals gave a new aspect to many matters.Between the moment, only five hours earlier, when she composed her face and toned her voice to allure the young man, and the present moment, when she was able to convulse him with a look, there was all the difference to her between a dead world and a living one.
In the condition of soul in which Mademoiselle de Verneuil now existed external life seemed to her a species of phantasmagoria.The carriage passed through villages and valleys and mounted hills which left no impressions on her mind.They reached Mayenne; the soldiers of the escort were changed; Merle spoke to her; she replied; they crossed the whole town and were again in the open country; but the faces, houses, streets, landscape, men, swept past her like the figments of a dream.
Night came, and Marie was travelling beneath a diamond sky, wrapped in soft light, and yet she was not aware that darkness had succeeded day;that Mayenne was passed; that Fougeres was near; she knew not even where she was going.That she should part in a few hours from the man she had chosen, and who, she believed, had chosen her, was not for her a possibility.Love is the only passion which looks to neither past nor future.Occasionally her thoughts escaped in broken words, in phrases devoid of meaning, though to her lover's ears they sounded like promises of love.To the two witnesses of this birth of passion she seemed to be rushing onward with fearful rapidity.Francine knew Marie as well as Madame du Gua knew the marquis, and their experience of the past made them await in silence some terrible finale.It was, indeed, not long before the end came to the drama which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had called, without perhaps imagining the truth of her words, a tragedy.