She
could merely hear the rain pelting on the glass roof with renewed rage.
And thereupon she fled, turned into the passage, re-entered her
drawing-room. There she collected and questioned herself. Had she desired
that abominable thing? No, her will had had nought to do with it. Most
certainly it had been paralyzed, prevented from acting. If it had been
possible for the thing to occur, it had occurred quite apart from her,
for assuredly she had been absent. Absent, that word reassured her. Yes,
indeed, that was the case, she had been absent. All her past life spread
out behind her, faultless, pure of any evil action. Never had she sinned,
never until that day had any consciousness of guilt weighed upon her
conscience. An honest and virtuous woman, she had remained upright amidst
all the excesses of her husband. An impassioned mother, she had been
ascending her calvary ever since her son's death. And this recollection
of Maurice alone drew her for a moment from her callousness, choked her
with a rising sob, as if in that direction lay her madness, the vainly
sought explanation of the crime. Vertigo again fell upon her, the thought
of her dead son and of the other being master in his place, all her
perverted passion for that only son of hers, the despoiled prince, all
her poisoned, fermenting rage which had unhinged and maddened her, even
to the point of murder.
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