Memoirs of Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc [librera reader txt] 📗

full of tawny lights. Her cheeks had more color in them than usual and her eyes were shining more brightly.

A long moment of silence followed. The two men gazed at her with distracted eyes, no longer as if she were an enemy, or sweetheart, or a victim, but simply as a radiant woman whose enchanting fascination charmed them. Ralph deeply moved, Beaumagnan motionless and prone, both of them admired her with the same fervor.

She raised to her lips a little metal whistle that Ralph knew well. Leonard must be on guard a little way off and would at once hurry to its call. But she changed her mind. Why call him when she remained the absolute mistress of the situation?

She went to Ralph, unknotted the handkerchief which kept the gag in its place, and said: “You did not come back, Ralph, as I thought you would. But you will come back, won’t you?”

If he had been free, he would have clasped her to him furiously. But why did she not cut through his bonds? What secret design prevented that?

He said firmly: “No. It’s all over.”

She raised herself on to the top of her toes and glued her lips to his, murmuring: “All over⁠—between us? You’re mad, Ralph!”

Beaumagnan sprang to his feet and, beside himself at the sight of this unexpected caress, advanced on her. But, as he stretched out his hand to seize her arm, she turned on him; and suddenly the coolness she had maintained up to that moment gave place to the real feelings which filled her, the feelings of execration and furious rancor with which he inspired her.

She broke out with a violence of which Ralph had not believed her capable: “Don’t touch me, you wretch! And don’t suppose that I’m afraid of you. Today you’re alone. And I saw quite clearly just now that you would never dare murder me. Your hands were trembling. My hands will not tremble, Beaumagnan, when your hour comes.”

He recoiled before her imprecations and her threats; and she went on, in a fresh access of hate: “But your hour has not yet come. You have not suffered enough. You did not suffer because you believed me dead. Your punishment now shall be to know that I am alive and that I love! Yes; understand that: I love Ralph. I loved him first in order to avenge myself on you and tell you of it later. And I love him today for no reason at all, just because he is himself and I can no longer forget him. He hardly knew it; I hardly knew it myself. But for some days, ever since he fled from me, I have felt that he is my whole life. I did not know what love was; and that is what love is: it’s this madness which burns me.”

She was a prey to delirium just as the man she was torturing. Her amorous cries seemed to hurt her as much as they hurt Beaumagnan. But to see her like that filled Ralph rather with distaste than with joy. The flame of passion and admiration and love, which had flared up in him in the hour of her peril, died down for good and all. Her beauty and charm vanished like a mirage; and on her face, which never the less had in no way changed, he saw the ugly reflection of a cruel and diseased spirit.

She continued her furious onslaught on Beaumagnan, who stood jerking with jealous fury. And it was really uncommonly disconcerting to see these two creatures, who, at the very moment at which circumstances were about to furnish them with the keyword of the enigma which had puzzled them so long, forget everything in the outburst of their passion. The great secret of past ages, the discovery of the jewels, the legendary block of granite, the casket, the inscription, the Widow Rousselin, and the person actually on the way to reveal the truth to them⁠—these were so many old wives’ tales in which neither of them no took any interest. Love, like a furious torrent, swept everything away. Hatred and passion had plunged into the eternal conflict which tears the hearts of lovers.

Once more the fingers of Beaumagnan were curved like talons and his trembling hands were outstretched to strangle her. But she raged at him, blind and beside herself, and flung in his face the insult of her love.

“I love him, Beaumagnan!” she cried. “The fire which burns you and devours me, too, is a love like your love; with it is mingled the idea of death and murder. Yes, I would rather kill him than know that he was another’s, or than know that he loves me no longer. But he does love me, Beaumagnan! He loves me! He loves me!”

An unexpected laugh burst from Beaumagnan’s convulsed lips; his fury ended in a fit of sardonic hilarity.

“He loves you, Josephine? You’re right: he loves you! He loves you as he loves all women. You’re beautiful and he desires you. Another passes and he desires her, too. And you suffer as I do the tortures of hell. Confess it!”

“The tortures of hell, yes,” she said, “the tortures of hell if I believe in his falseness. But it isn’t so; and you’re trying stupidly to⁠—”

She stopped short. Beaumagnan was chuckling with such a malicious joy that she was afraid.

In a low voice and in a tone of sudden pain she said: “A proof! Give me a single proof.⁠ ⁠… Not even a proof.⁠ ⁠… A mere indication.⁠ ⁠… Something that compels me to doubt.⁠ ⁠… And I’ll kill him like a dog!”

She drew from her bodice a small life-preserver, a ball of lead with a whalebone handle. Her eyes grew hard.

Beaumagnan answered: “What I bring you will not make you doubt; it will give you certainty.”

“Speak.⁠ ⁠… Give me a name.”

“Clarice d’Etigues,” he said.

She shrugged her shoulders and said confidently: “I know all about that; a flirtation of no importance.”

“It was important enough to him since he asked