"If Leonor came here we could easily find some means. I could have a headache, one Sunday, stay in my room, be alone in the house; besides, there is luck."
She always entrusted herself to luck. She had never yielded to any of her lovers except on the spur of the moment.
"Might we not recapture," she went on, "something of the night at Compiègne, even in a rapid abandonment?"
Women are ruminants: they can live for months, for years it may be, on a voluptuous memory. That is what explains the apparent virtue of certain women; one lovely sin, like a beautiful flower with an immortal perfume, is enough to bless all the days of their life. Women still remember the first kiss when men have forgotten the last.
Hortense dreamed, Leonor desired. He thought only of yesterday's mistress, when he did think of her, in order to make her the mistress of to-morrow. His sentimentality was material. He crossed the stream from stone to stepping-stone, from reality to reality. In default of Hortense, he had taken Gratienne, not to satisfy his physical, but his cerebral needs. To live, he had to have the electuary of two or three sensations, always the same, but always fresh. Was he capable of a profound emotion, and would such a love have influenced his physiological habits? He did not know. Faithful to Bouret's theories, he did not think so.
He wrote to Hortense: "I want you to come." She was frightened but happy.
The pleasure of obeying struggled in her with fear. Fear, at certain moments, gave way.
"Since he wants me to come, it is clear that he knows I can come, that there is no danger. And then, he will be there!"
She leaned on Leonor as on a second husband, stronger, more real, though distant. Distant? But wasn't he always present in her thoughts?
One morning her fear gave way altogether, she wrote, set out, arrived.
She was trembling, and she still trembled long after the bolts were shot.
This new festival of love was vain, on account of her sensibility. Leonor, astonished by a coldness which he imagined he had overcome for ever, attributed it to a failure of tenderness. He knew that women only palpitate with the men they adore, but he thought that they ought always to palpitate. He did He did not know that there are women who, their whole life long, pursue the delirious sensations which they are doomed never to find again. He imagined therefore, that he was no longer loved, and he was bitter, for men are readily bitter when their mistress's exaltation is too moderate.