What is the meaning of violence?
Then came quarrels, a complete separation, not apparent, but real; next, her husband showed himself aggressive, suspicious and violent. Now, he was jealous, jealous of Jacques, and this day even, after a scene, he had struck her.
She added with decision: “I will not go back to him. Do with me what you like.”
Jacques sat down opposite to her, their knees touching each other. He caught hold of her hands:
“My dear love, you are going to commit a gross, an irreparable folly. If you want to quit your husband, put wrongs on one side, so that your situation as a woman of the world may be saved.”
She asked, as she cast at him, restless glance:
“Then, what do you advise me?”
“To go back home, and put up with your life there, till the day when you can obtain either a separation or a divorcé, with the honors of war.”
“Is not this thing which you advise me to do a little cowardly?”
“No: it is wise and reasonable. You have a high position, a reputation to safe guard, friends to preserve, and relations to deal with. You must not lose all these through mere caprice.”
She rose up, and said with violence:
“Well, no! I cannot have any more of it! It is at an end! It is at an end!”
Then placing her two hands on her lover’s shoulders and looking at him straight in the face, she asked:
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Really and truly.”
“Yes.”
“Then keep me.”
He exclaimed:
“Keep you? In my house? Here? Why, you are mad. It would mean losing you forever; losing you beyond hope of recall! You are mad!”
She replied, slowly and seriously, like a woman who feels the weight of her words:
“Listen, Jacques. He has forbidden me to see you again, and I will not play this comedy of coming secretly to your house. You must either lose me or take me.”
“My dear Irene, in that case, obtain your divorcé, and I will marry you.”
“Yes, you will marry me in – two years at the soonest. Yours is a patient love.”
“ Look here! Reflect! If you remain here, he’ll come tomorrow to take you away, seeing that he is your husband, seeing that he has a right and law on his side.”
“ I did not ask you to keep me in your house, Jacques, but to take me anywhere you like. I thought you loved me enough to do that. I have made a mistake. Good-bye.”
She turned around, and went toward the door so quickly that he was not able to catch hold of her when she had gone outside the room
“Listen Irene.”
She struggled, and did not want to listen to him any longer her eyes full of tears, and with these words only on her lips:
“Let me alone! Let me alone! Let me alone!”
He made her sit down by force, and falling once more on his knees at her feet, he now brought forward number of arguments and counsels to make her understand the folly and terrible risk of her project. He omitted nothing which he deemed if necessary to say to convince her, finding in his very affection for her strong motives of persuasion.
As she remained silent and cold, he begged of her, implored of her to listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice.
When he had finished speaking, she only replied:
“Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that I may rise up.”
“Look here, Irene.”
“Will you let go.”
“Irene – is your resolution irrevocable?”
“Do let me go.”
“Tell me only whether this resolution, this foolish resolution of yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?”
“Yes: let me go!”
“Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away tomorrow morning.”
She rose up, in spite of him, and said in a hard tone:
“No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice: I want devotion.”
“Stay! I have done what I ought to do: I have said what I ought to say. I have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is at peace. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey.”
She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked, in a very calm voice:
“Explain then.”
“How is that? What do you wish me to explain?”
“Everything – everything that you thought about before coming to this resolution. Then I will see what I ought to do.”
“But I have thought about nothing at all. I ought to warn you that you are going to accomplish an act of folly. You persist; and then I ask to share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it.”
“It is not natural to change one’s opinion so quickly.”
“Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or devotion. On the day when I realized that I love you, I said this to myself, which every lover ought to say to himself in the same case: The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets her and who takes her contracts so far as he is himself and so far as she is concerned, a sacred engagement.’ It is mark you, a question of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive and yielding disposition.
“Marriage, which has a great social value, a great legal value, possesses in my eyes only a slight moral value, taking into account the conditions under which it generally takes place.
“Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no attachment to a husband whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart is free, meets a man whom she cares, and gives herself to him, when a man who has no other tie takes a woman in this way, I say that they pledge themselves toward each other by this mutual and free agreement much more than by the ‘Yes’ uttered in the presence of the mayor".
“I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be more intimate, more real, more healthy than if all the sacraments had consecrated it."
“This woman risks everything. And it is exactly because she knows it, because she gives everything, her heart, her body, her soul, her honor, her life, because she has foreseen all miseries, all dangers, all catastrophes, because she dares to do a bold act, an intrepid act, because she is prepared,determined to brave everything – her husband who might kill her, and society which may cast her out. This is why she is heroic in her conjugal infidelity; this is why her lover is taking her must also have foreseen everything, and preferred her to everything, whatever might happen. I have nothing more to say. I spoke in the beginning like a man of sense whose duty was to warn you; and now there is left in me only a man – the man who loves you. Say, then, what I am to do!”
Radiant, she closed his mouth with her lips, and said to him in a low tone:
“It is not true darling! There is nothing the matter! My husband does not suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know, what you would do. I wished for a New Year’s gift – the gift of your heart – another gift besides the necklace you have sent to me. You have given it to me. Thanks! God be thanked for the happiness you have given me!”