Ah, yes, Felix, a kiss furtively taken may be a crime.  Perhaps it is just that a woman should harshly expiate the few steps taken apart from husband and children that she might walk alone with thoughts and memories that were not of them, and so walking, marry her soul to another.  Perhaps it is the worst of crimes when the inward being lowers itself to the region of human kisses.  When a woman bends to receive her husband’s kiss with a mask upon her face, that is a crime!  It is a crime to think of a future springing from a death, a crime to imagine a motherhood without terrors, handsome children playing in the evening with a beloved father before the eyes of a happy mother.  Yes, I sinned, sinned greatly.  I have loved the penances inflicted by the Church,—­which did not redeem the faults, for the priest was too indulgent.  God has placed the punishment in the faults themselves, committing the execution of his vengeance to the one for whom the faults were committed.  When I gave my hair, did I not give myself?  Why did I so often dress in white? because I seemed the more your lily; did you not see me here, for the first time, all in white?  Alas!  I have loved my children less, for all intense affection is stolen from the natural affections.  Felix, do you not see that all suffering has its meaning.  Strike me, wound me even more than Monsieur de Mortsauf and my children’s state have wounded me.  That woman is the instrument of God’s anger; I will meet her without hatred; I will smile upon her; under pain of being neither Christian, wife, nor mother, I ought to love her.  If, as you tell me, I contributed to keep your heart unsoiled by the world, that Englishwoman ought not to hate me.  A woman should love the mother of the man she loves, and I am your mother.  What place have I sought in your heart? that left empty by Madame de Vandenesse.  Yes, yes, you have always complained of my coldness; yes, I am indeed your mother only.  Forgive me therefore the involuntary harshness with which I met you on your return; a mother ought to rejoice that her son is so well loved—­”

She laid her head for a moment on my breast, repeating the words, “Forgive me! oh, forgive me!” in a voice that was neither her girlish voice with its joyous notes, nor the woman’s voice with despotic endings; not the sighing sound of the mother’s woe, but an agonizing new voice for new sorrows.

“You, Felix,” she presently continued, growing animated; “you are the friend who can do no wrong.  Ah! you have lost nothing in my heart; do not blame yourself, do not feel the least remorse.  It was the height of selfishness in me to ask you to sacrifice the joys of life to an impossible future; impossible, because to realize it a woman must abandon her children, abdicate her position, and renounce eternity.  Many a time I have thought you higher than I; you were great and noble, I, petty and criminal.  Well, well, it is settled now; I can be to you no more than a light from above, sparkling and cold, but unchanging.