Oh! I have known pain indeed!"
The Vicomtesse raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling; and the
cornice, no doubt, received all the confidences which a stranger might
not hear. When a woman is afraid to look at her interlocutor, there is
in truth no gentler, meeker, more accommodating confidant than the
cornice. The cornice is quite an institution in the boudoir; what is
it but the confessional, /minus/ the priest?
Mme. de Beauseant was eloquent and beautiful at that moment; nay,
"coquettish," if the word were not too heavy. By justifying herself
and love, she was stimulating every sentiment in the man before her;
nay, more, the higher she set the goal, the more conspicuous it grew.
At last, when her eyes had lost the too eloquent expression given to
them by painful memories, she let them fall on Gaston.
"You acknowledge, do you not, that I am bound to lead a solitary,
self-contained life?" she said quietly.
So sublime was she in her reasoning and her madness, that M. de Nueil
felt a wild longing to throw himself at her feet; but he was afraid of
making himself ridiculous, so he held his enthusiasm and his thoughts
in check. He was afraid, too, that he might totally fail to express
them, and in no less terror of some awful rejection on her part, or of
her mockery, an apprehension which strikes like ice to the most fervid
soul.
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