Belle De Jour by Joseph Kessel Page B

twin who had ruled her in darkness and dismay melted away. Strong and serene, she found her soul united again. Since destiny refused to permit Pierre to give her the joy that gross strangers gave, what could she do about it? Did she have to surrender a pleasure which with other women was a part of love? If she’d had their luck would she ever have taken this frightful path in the first place? Who then could reproach her for actions that the very cells of her body, over which she had no control, demanded? It was the right of every animal to know the sacred spasm which each spring makes the earth tremble.
    This revelation transformed Séverine. The suffering of her wretched struggle was annulled, so that she was once more her former self. She recovered her self-assurance, together with the serene zest for life she’d previously known. In fact, she felt stronger than ever; for now she had discovered and destroyed the quicksand, teeming with monsters, on which she had so long and so precariously struggled to maintain her life.
    Had Séverine been at all disturbed about the path she had deliberately chosen, Pierre’s once-feared eyes would have been the first to confirm her doubts. But as it was, they watched Séverine’s resurrection with touching joy. And they had plenty of time to feast themselves on the spectacle, since she was clever enough to draw out her recovery. Only by degrees did she give up her humility, her timid servitude. She took a daily step in this direction, but only one. Daily she made some new demand on her husband, but one only. She could see how happy he was to obey her, but she knew that if her personality altered too quickly she ran the risk of alarming him and making him suspicious. She didn’t want to do that, nor did she want to give up her visits to Mme Anaïs. She sought for a balance between these two necessities: the balance of her fulfillment.
    Very patiently and calmly she reached her goal. Or was even this an act? Séverine could pretend so easily now, she was no longer able to recognize pretense. But she’d never felt so completely and purely Pierre’s as when she now returned from the rue Virène, exorcized. The two hours she spent there every day were a separate, isolated life, hermetically sealed and feeding on itself. And during those hours Séverine truly forgot who she was. Only her body’s secret existed, like one of those strange flowers which open for a moment only to return at once to their virginal repose.
    Soon Séverine hardly realized she was leading a double life. Her existence seemed to have been planned like this long before she was born.
    She placed the seal on her new life by once morebecoming physically Pierre’s wife. She no longer had any qualms about bringing him a soiled body, because she felt that on the way back from the rue Virène she was completely renewed, even to the substance of her flesh. And in her love-making with Pierre she was now more maternal than ever, for without realizing it, she was afraid that some too passionate or skillful movement might reveal the illicit knowledge of Belle de Jour.

VII
    The first time she saw Marcel Séverine hardly noticed him. He came in with Hippolyte, who attracted her attention immediately: even before she met him Séverine had been intrigued by the sense of evil which surrounded him.
    “Now be nice to Hippolyte,” Mme Anaïs instructed, without looking them in the face.
    “Don’t worry, we will,” Charlotte answered uneasily, “but I thought we’d got rid of him for good.”
    With a sigh Mme Anaïs shrugged her shoulders.
    “You never know with him. Maybe we’ll never seehim again. Or maybe he’ll be here for a week on end. Anyhow, be nice to him, you won’t be sorry.”
    In the hall Séverine asked, “Who is he?”
    “She won’t tell us,” Mathilde murmured.
    “Rich?”
    “You kidding!” cried Charlotte. “He never pays a red cent.”
    “Why not?”
    “Mme Anaïs says so. At first we thought he