illusion had deserted her, now that she was able to think back and recall that during the whole course of their relationship he had never once kissed her unless she had first asked him to do so, now that she remembered how guarded he had been in his forced protestations of fondness, she understood only too well how he had felt from the beginning, how he had only half reciprocated—and half was perhaps an exaggeration—the deep affection she had lavished on him, how he had tolerated her advances with a certain good-natured calculation, how he had responded half-heartedly to her full-hearted outpouring, how he had even rejected certain of her maddest suggestions, how, in short, he was, by type and birth, a cabot and a maquereau, and, above all, a youth, with every one of the normal desires of youth. And yet, she was now confessing to herself, she still loved him.
A line from Victor Hugo wandered, inexplicably, into her mind: Je suis veuf, je suis seul, et sur moi le soir tombe. Yes, she was growing old; she had admitted this freely after her first two days of loneliness; she had been relentless and cruel to herself. She had compelled herself to gaze at her fading reflection in the great oval glass with its ornate Louis XV gilt frame, which stood in her dressing-room. She was old; she was fifty, and now, for the first time, her anxiety was making her look her full age. Until Tony had deserted her, she had been carefree; fairness made her add the word comparatively.
