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The Temptation of a Respectable Woman
(The Temptation of a Respectable Woman)
was a little annoyed to
learn that her husband expected his friend,
Gouvernail, up
to spend a week or two
on the plantation.
Gouvernail's
quiet
personality
puzzled
.
After
a
few
days
with
him,
she
could
understand him no better than at first.
She left her husband and his guest, for the most
part, alone
together, only to find that
Gouvernail hardly noticed her absence. Then she
imposed her company
upon him,
accompanying him in his idle walks to the
mill to press her attempt to
penetrate the
silence in
which he had unconsciously covered himself. But it
hardly worked.
—
your
friend?
a terrible nuisance.
I
should
like
him
better
if
he
did
—
if
he
were
more
like
others,
and
I
had
to
plan
somewhat for his
comfort and enjoyment.
Gaston pulled the sleeve of his wife's
dress, gathered his arms around her waist and
looked
merrily into her troubled eyes.
act
under
given
conditions.
Here
you
are,
he
went
on,
poor
Gouvernail
seriously
and
making a fuss about him, the last thing
he would desire or expect.
know, you said he was
clever.
here to take a
rest.
used
to
say
he
was
a
man
of
wit,
she
said,
still
annoyed.
expected
him
to
be
interesting, at least. I'm going to the
city in the morning to have my spring dresses
fitted. Let me
know when nail is gone;
until that time I shall be at my aunt's
house.
That night she went and sat alone upon
a bench that stood beneath an oak tree at the edge
of
the walk. She had never known her
thoughts to be so confused; like the bats now
above her, her
thoughts quickly flew
this way and that. She could gather nothing from
them but the feeling of a
distinct
necessity to leave her home in the next morning.
heard
footsteps
coming
from
the
direction
of
the
barn;
she
knew
it
was
Gouvernail. She hoped to remain
unnoticed, but her white gown revealed her to him.
He seated
himself upon the bench beside
her, without a suspicion that she might object to
his presence.
sheer
white
fabric
with
which
she
sometimes
covered
her
head
and
shoulders.
She
accepted
it
from him and let it lie in her lap.
He
made
some
routine
observations
upon
the
unhealthy
effect
of
the
night
breeze
at
that
season. Then as his
gaze reached out into the darkness, he began to
talk.
Gouvernail was in no sense a shy man.
His periods of silence were not his basic nature,
but
the result of moods. When he was
sitting there beside , his silence melted for the
time.
He
talked freely and intimately in a low, hesitating
voice that was not unpleasant to hear. He
talked
of
the
old
college
days
when
he
and
Gaston
had
been
best
friends,
of
the
days
of
keen
ambitions and large
intentions. Now, all there was left with him was a
desire to be permitted to
exist, with
now and then a little breath of genuine life, such
as he was breathing now.
Her
mind
only
vaguely
grasped
what
he
was
saying.
His
words
became
a
meaningless
succession of
verbs, nouns, adverbs, and adjectives; she only
drank in the tones of his voice. She
wanted to reach out her hand in the
darkness and touch him
—
which she might have done if she
had
not been a respectable woman.
The stronger the desire
grew to bring herself near him, the further, in
fact, did she move away
from him. As
soon as she could do so without an appearance of
being rude, she pretended to yawn,
rose, and left him there alone.
was greatly
tempted that night to tell her husband
—
who was also her friend
—
of this
foolishness that had seized her. But she did not
yield to the temptation. Besides being an
upright and respectable woman she was
also a very sensible one.
When
Gaston
arose
the
next
morning,
his
wife
had
already
departed,
without
even
saying
farewell. A porter
had carried her trunk to the station and she had
taken an early morning train to
the
city. She did not return until Gouvernail was gone
from under her roof.
There was some talk of having him back
during the summer that followed. That is, Gaston
greatly desired it; but this desire
yielded to his honorable wife's vigorous
opposition.
However, before the year ended, she
proposed, wholly from herself, to have Gouvernail
visit
them again. Her husband was
surprised and delighted with the suggestion coming
from her.