of animals, so I now knew that she and I were separated by a universe.  A wail arose within our souls like an echo of that woeful “Consummatum est” heard in the churches on Good Friday at the hour the Saviour died,—­a dreadful scene which awes young souls whose first love is religion.  All Henriette’s illusions were killed at one blow; her heart had endured its passion.  She did not look at me; she refused me the light that for six long years had shone upon my life.  She knew well that the spring of the effulgent rays shed by our eyes was in our souls, to which they served as pathways to reach each other, to blend them in one, meeting, parting, playing, like two confiding women who tell each other all.  Bitterly I felt the wrong of bringing beneath this roof, where pleasure was unknown, a face on which the wings of pleasure had shaken their prismatic dust.  If, the night before, I had allowed Lady Dudley to depart alone, if I had then returned to Clochegourde, where, it may be, Henriette awaited me, perhaps—­perhaps Madame de Mortsauf might not so cruelly have resolved to be my sister.  But now she paid me many ostentatious attentions,—­playing her part vehemently for the very purpose of not changing it.  During breakfast she showed me a thousand civilities, humiliating attentions, caring for me as though I were a sick man whose fate she pitied.

“You were out walking early,” said the count; “I hope you have brought back a good appetite, you whose stomach is not yet destroyed.”

This remark, which brought the smile of a sister to Henriette’s lips, completed my sense of the ridicule of my position.  It was impossible to be at Clochegourde by day and Saint-Cyr by night.  During the day I felt how difficult it was to become the friend of a woman we have long loved.  The transition, easy enough when years have brought it about, is like an illness in youth.  I was ashamed; I cursed the pleasure Lady Dudley gave me; I wished that Henriette would demand my blood.  I could not tear her rival in pieces before her, for she avoided speaking of her; indeed, had I spoken of Arabella, Henriette, noble and sublime to the inmost recesses of her heart, would have despised my infamy.  After five years of delightful intercourse we now had nothing to say to each other; our words had no connection with our thoughts; we were hiding from each other our intolerable pain,—­we, whose mutual sufferings had been our first interpreter.

Henriette assumed a cheerful look for me as for herself, but she was sad.  She spoke of herself as my sister, and yet found no ground on which to converse; and we remained for the greater part of the time in constrained silence.  She increased my inward misery by feigning to believe that she was the only victim.

“I suffer more than you,” I said to her at a moment when my self-styled sister was betrayed into a feminine sarcasm.

“How so?” she said haughtily.

“Because I am the one to blame.”