What can I do to
make you believe it?"
Then she would stand before the mirror arraying herself as though for a
ball, affecting a coquetry that she was far from feeling, trying to adopt
my tone, laughing and skipping about the room. "Am I to your taste?" she
would ask. "Which one of your mistresses do I resemble? Am I beautiful
enough to make you forget that any one can believe in love? Have I a
sufficiently careless air to suit you?" Then in the midst of that
factitious joy, she would turn her back and I could see her shudder until
the flowers she had placed in her hair trembled. I threw myself at her
feet.
"Stop!" I cried, "you resemble only too closely, that which you try to
imitate, that which my mouth has been so vile as to conjure up before
you. Lay aside those flowers and that dress. Let us wash away such
mimicry with a sincere tear; do not remind me that I am but a prodigal
son; I remember the past too well."
But even this repentance was cruel as it proved to her that the fantoms
in my heart were full of reality. In yielding to an impulse of horror, I
merely gave her to understand that her resignation and her desire to
please me only served to call up an impure image.
And it was true; I reached her side transported with joy, swearing that I
would regret my past life; on my knees, I protested my respect for her;
then a gesture, a word, a trick of turning as she approached me, recalled
to my mind the fact that such and such a woman had made that gesture, had
used that word, had that same trick of turning.
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