Should I not begin to dread that you were
faithful to me through fear? And if a man knows that he must
risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not seem more
tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing
to do."
"Then what is it that you wish?"
"Your obedience and my liberty."
"Ah, God!" cried he, "I am a child."
"A wayward, much spoilt child," she said, stroking the thick
hair, for his head still lay on her knee. "Ah! and loved far
more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not
stay as we are? Why not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt
me? Why not take what I can give, when it is all that I can
honestly grant? Are you not happy?"
"Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette,
doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not?"
In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And
the Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her
conscience by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand's
love gave her a thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made
as necessary to her as society, or the Opera. To feel that she
was adored by this man, who rose above other men, whose character
frightened her; to treat him like a child; to play with him as
Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like the wives of King
Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with all the
blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she surrendered
the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close
pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness
she could not mistake; even as she herself played with his dark,
thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen, the
Duchess would say to herself:
"This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I
am playing with him.
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