No, you must not rebel," she
added to the priest, who was about to speak. "I hope you will not
thwart a woman on her wedding-day."
An hour later she was alone with her husband in the room she had so
joyously arranged a few hours earlier. They had reached that fatal bed
where, like a tomb, so many hopes are wrecked, where the waking to a
happy life is all uncertain, where love is born or dies, according to
the natures that are tried there. Marie looked at the clock. "Six
hours to live," she murmured.
"Can I have slept?" she cried toward morning, wakening with one of
those sudden movements which rouse us when we have made ourselves a
promise to wake at a certain hour. "Yes, I have slept," she thought,
seeing by the light of the candles that the hands of the clock were
pointing to two in the morning. She turned and looked at the sleeping
marquis, lying like a child with his head on one hand, the other
clasping his wife's hand, his lips half smiling as though he had
fallen asleep while she kissed him.
"Ah!" she whispered to herself, "he sleeps like an infant; he does not
distrust me--me, to whom he has given a happiness without a name."
She touched him softly and he woke, continuing to smile. He kissed the
hand he held and looked at the wretched woman with eyes so sparkling
that she could not endure their light and slowly lowered her large
eyelids.
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