'Then won't you let me come and see you as I ask?' said René, returning to the charge.
'What you are asking me to do is to kill our happiness,' cried Suzanne; 'so sensitive as I know you to be, you would never stand the shocks to which you would be exposed. You know nothing of that world in which I am obliged to live, and how unfitted you are for it. And afterwards you would hold me responsible for your disenchantment. Give up this fatal idea, love, give it up for my sake.'
'What is there then in this life of yours that I may not see?' asked the poet, looking at her fixedly. He could not be aware that Suzanne had only one aim in view--to get him to tell her the reason of this sudden desire--for she concluded that it must be the same reason which had caused his distress the other day, and which had taken him to Madame Komof's so unexpectedly. She was not mistaken as to René's meaning, and replied in the broken accents of a woman unjustly accused:
'How can you talk to me like that, René? Some one must have poisoned your mind. You cannot have got hold of such ideas yourself. Come to my house, love! Come as often as you like! "Something in my life that you may not see"--I, who would rather die than tell you a lie!'
'Then why did you tell me a lie the other day?' cried René. Conquered by the despair he thought he could see in those beautiful eyes, disarmed by the permission she had just given him, unable to keep the secret of his grief any longer, he felt that necessity of unbosoming himself which, in a quarrel with a woman, is as good as putting one's head into a noose.
'Yes, when you told me you went to the theatre with your husband.'
'So did I,' said René; 'there was some one else in your box.'
'Desforges!' cried Suzanne; 'you're mad, my dear René--mad! He came into our box during one of the intervals, and my husband made him stay till the piece was over. Desforges!' she repeated with a smile, 'why, he's nobody. I didn't even think of mentioning him. Seriously, you don't mean to say you're jealous of Desforges?'
'You looked so bright and happy,' rejoined René, in a voice that already showed signs of relenting.
'Ungrateful man,' she said; 'I wish you could have read what was going on within me! It is this necessity for continual dissimulation which is the bane of my life; and now, to have you reproach me with it! No, René--this is too cruel, too unjust!'