As she talked to me like this every word entered my conscience like the most cruel reproach. She then burst into tears, and the tears which flowed down her thin cheeks were long, abundant tears which she wiped with her poor little handkerchief on which the edges of her teeth had left traces of her nervousness and anguish. I experienced, as I watched her genuine tears flow, poignant remorse for my falseness. It was no longer possible for me to go back on what I had said, and ninety-nine men out of a hundred in acting as I had done would have believed that they were doing right. I myself had enough evidence to realize that this passage from pity to lies, which had been so natural to me, constituted a real crime in the presence of such profound passion. The heart which loves and suffers has a right to know the entire truth whatever it may be. The thankful smiles which Camille gave me through her tears were almost physically intolerable to me. Besides, one does not deceive for long the lucidity of justified jealousy. Can it be blinded even for a minute? It is soothed by being misled as regards the facts. What are facts? When a woman feels herself to be loved even the most convincing count for nothing. When a woman feels, as Camille did, treachery hovering around her in the atmosphere, illusion is no sooner produced on one point than lucidity awakens on another. The person goes on searching in the dark for a proof which is always forthcoming, very often by a chance which is all the more grievous as it is not considered. No. If it were to begin over again at the risk of playing in my own eyes the obvious part of the cruel wretch, I would not lend myself to that cowardly lying charity to which I leant myself that morning. The only result of it was to render more painful the scene, to the recital of which I have now come, the scene which marks the definite entrance into the third period, that of furious certainty and exasperated despair. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII