Nevertheless, the first thing I did when I was able to leave my room was to visit my mistress.  I found her alone, seated in the corner of her room, with an expression of sorrow on her face and an appearance of general disorder in her surroundings.  I overwhelmed her with violent reproaches; I was intoxicated with despair.  In a paroxysm of grief I fell on the bed and gave free course to my tears.

“Ah! faithless one! wretch!” I cried between my sobs, “you knew that it would kill me.  Did the prospect please you?  What have I done to you?”

She threw her arms around my neck, saying that she had been tempted, that my rival had intoxicated her at that fatal supper, but that she had never been his; that she had abandoned herself in a moment of forgetfulness; that she had committed a fault but not a crime; but that if I would not pardon her, she, too, would die.  All that sincere repentance has of tears, all that sorrow has of eloquence, she exhausted in order to console me; pale and distraught, her dress deranged, her hair falling over her shoulders, she kneeled in the middle of her chamber; never have I seen anything so beautiful, and I shuddered with horror as my senses revolted at the sight.

I went away crushed, scarcely able to direct my tottering steps.  I wished never to see her again; but in a quarter of an hour I returned.  I do not know what desperate resolve I had formed; I experienced a full desire to know her mine once more, to drain the cup of tears and bitterness to the dregs, and then to die with her.  In short I abhorred her, yet I idolized her; I felt that her love was ruin, but that to live without her was impossible.  I mounted the stairs like a flash; I spoke to none of the servants, but, familiar with the house, opened the door of her chamber.

I found her seated calmly before her toilette-table, covered with jewels; she held in her hand a piece of red crepe which she passed gently over her cheeks.  I thought I was dreaming; it did not seem possible that this was the woman I had left, just fifteen minutes before, overwhelmed with grief, abased to the floor; I was as motionless as a statue.  She, hearing the door open, turned her head and smiled: 

“Is it you?” she said.

She was going to a ball and was expecting my rival.  As she recognized me, she compressed her lips and frowned.

I started to leave the room.  I looked at her bare neck, lithe and perfumed, on which rested her knotted hair confined by a jewelled comb; that neck, the seat of vital force, was blacker than hell; two shining tresses had fallen there and some light silvern hairs balanced above it.  Her shoulders and neck, whiter than milk, displayed a heavy growth of down.  There was in that knotted mass of hair something maddeningly lovely, which seemed to mock me when I thought of the sorrowful abandon in which I had seen her a moment before.  I suddenly stepped up to her and struck that neck with the back of my hand.  My mistress gave vent to a cry of terror, and fell on her hands, while I hastened from the room.