She was surprised
sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and
she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she
was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.
Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a
vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.
"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me?
What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?"
She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
flowing tears.
"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in
during these crises.
"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would
worry him."
"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere
Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at
Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her
standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a
winding-sheet spread out before the door.
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