of its arms. It was a woman. All his ideas of courage vanished. "If it is she, what is she going to say?" What were his emotions when a little cry gave him to understand, that it was Madame de Rênal?
He clasped her in his arms. She trembled and scarcely had the strength to push him away.
"Unhappy man. What are you doing?" Her agonised voice could scarcely articulate the words.
Julien thought that her voice rang with the most genuine indignation.
"I have come to see you after a cruel separation of more than fourteen months."
"Go away, leave me at once. Oh, M. Chélan, why did you prevent me writing to him? I could then have foreseen this horror." She pushed him away with a truly extraordinary strength. "Heaven has deigned to enlighten me," she repeated in a broken voice. "Go away! Flee!"
"After fourteen months of unhappiness I shall certainly not leave you without a word. I want to know all you have done. Yes, I have loved you enough to deserve this confidence. I want to know everything." This authoritative tone dominated Madame de Rênal's heart in spite of herself. Julien, who was hugging her passionately and resisting her efforts to get loose, left off clasping her in his arms. This reassured Madame de Rênal a little.
"I will take away the ladder," he said, "to prevent it compromising us in case some servant should be awakened by the noise, and go on a round."
"Oh leave me, leave me!" she cried with an admirable anger. "What do men matter to me! It is God who sees the awful scene you are now making. You are abusing meanly the sentiments which I had for you but have no longer. Do you hear, Monsieur Julien?"
He took away the ladder very slowly so as not to make a noise.
"Is your husband in town, dear," he said to her not in order to defy her but as a sheer matter of habit.
"Don't talk to me like that, I beg you, or I will call my husband. I feel only too guilty in not having sent you away before. I pity you," she said to him, trying to wound his, as she well knew, irritable pride.
