Whether out of kindness or some more complex emotion over which he had no control, Marcel at first made no use of the weapon he held over Séverine. While he delayed, a shadow intervened.
One Thursday around four—each detail remained inscribed in Séverine’s memory—Mme Anaïs summoned her girls.
“And look your best,” she instructed them. “It’s a rich gentleman. He wants to see all of you.”
No warning lit in Séverine’s mind as she followed her companions. With her quiet grace, her beautiful shoulders back, she went into the big room. The man was at the window; only his back was visible. But a glimpse of that narrow bony figure made Séverine start away. A second more and she’d have opened the door to run, to bury herself alive somewhere. And Mme Anaïs would never have seen her again. But Séverine never made that movement. The new client of the rue Virène swung around and, suddenly drained of strength, Séverine found herself unable to take a step, nor to release the great groan that went through her.
The small weary eyes of Henri Husson fell on her. It only lasted a moment, but she felt trapped at the end of a thread no human power could ever sever. Hippolyte’s heavy bulk was light beside the fleeting focus of that gaze.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” said Husson. “Do sit down, please.”
“He’s nice, isn’t he, Mathilde?” giggled Charlotte.
The contrast in the two voices, representing the meeting of her two existences, broke Séverine. She slipped onto a chair, hands clenched, as though the deadly grip of her fingers could prevent her remaining reason and life from running out.
“If you’d care for some refreshment, sir,” suggested Mme Anaïs.
“Of course … whatever the ladies want … But what are their names again? Ah yes, Mlle Charlotte, Mlle Mathilde, and—Belle de Jour. Now that’s an unusual name, Belle de Jour, very odd.”
All the musical resources of his voice were put into play, all his wearing charm. Séverine’s hands unclenched, her arms hung loosely against her body as if stuffed with straw.
Drinks were brought. Charlotte tried to sit on Husson’s knees. He courteously declined.
“Later on, Mademoiselle,” he said. “For the moment let me just enjoy your presence, and your conversation.”
He began to discuss various trifles, but with more and more studied care, more and more pointedly, until each of his phrases tore up Séverine’s soul piece by piece. She didn’t feel any shame in particular, nor even fear, rather a horrible undefinable sense of sickness. With the same skill Husson provoked Charlotte into ambiguous retorts and coarse laughs. He prolonged this game of double-entendre for a whole hour, during which he barely glanced at Séverine; but when he did, flickers of light deepened his eyes. Séverine realized with horror that these feeble symptoms denoted lust.
What won’t he do to feed and increase it, she thought. She knew the dark depths the pursuit of that divinity led to.
But Husson paid for the drinks, put a few bills on the mantelpiece and said, “Please share this little souvenir of my visit among you. Farewell, ladies.”
With a sense of prostration, Séverine watched him leave the room; but as soon as he’d gone a desperate impulse hurled her after him. She had to know whether, be certain that … she had to.… Husson was taking leave of Mme Anaïs in the foyer. Had he really meant to go, or was he waiting for Belle de Jour to appear? Probably he wasn’t sure himself, but had let his more morbid instincts guide him toward that difficult pleasure which only certain facial expressions, certain perversities, now gave him.
“Stop,” Séverine stammered out, stretching her arm out to Husson. “I have to.…”
“Now look, Belle de Jour,” protested Mme Anaïs. “You’re usually so polite. What’s Monsieur going to think of you?”
Husson was silent for several seconds in order to lose nothing of the triumph of this call to order. Then he said:
“I’d like to be alone with Madame … completely private, that is.”
“All right, what are you waiting for, Belle de Jour?” Mme Anaïs exclaimed. “Take Monsieur to your room.”
“Not there.”
“But I beg you, please don’t change any of your usual customs for me,” added Husson in a slightly unsteady voice.
When the door was shut behind them a sort of hysteria flamed up in Séverine.
“How could you, how did you dare?” she cried out. “Don’t go and tell me you came by chance. You knew I was here, didn’t you … you gave me the address yourself. Why? Why?”
She allowed him no time to answer. An idea had crossed her mind.
“You don’t think you’ll get me this way, do you,” she continued more rapidly. “I’ll scream, throw myself out the window … Stay where you are. You disgust me more than any human being has ever disgusted me.”
“This your bed?” inquired Husson quietly.
“Ah, that was what you wanted to see, wasn’t it? Yes, this is my room, and that’s my bed. What else do you want to know? My specialty, how I do it? Dirty photographs? You’re worse than anyone I’ve seen here.”
Then she stopped, because the delight with which he was listening to her became too obvious.
Husson waited a while. Then, seeing that Séverine insisted on remaining silent, he took her hand and began stroking it with the tips of his thin cold fingers. An enormous weariness, compounded of gratitude, melancholy and compassion, suffused his face.
“All you say is quite just,” he observed quietly, “but who could forgive me better than you?”
Séverine was stunned by his reply. She fell back on the bed. Her haggard schoolgirl look … the scarlet coverlet … Husson felt the resurgence of a desire he thought he had entirely exhausted. He took his pleasure in silence; afterward, fatigue, sadness and pity kept him hunched forward. For a second Séverine and he stared at each other like pitiable animals under the ban of the same incomprehensible, incurable evil.
Husson rose. He managed not to make the slightest sound, as if frightened of awakening the impure power that had brought them together in that room. Séverine, however, had still not won from him the only promise which could restore her to life.
“One minute, just a minute,” she begged.
Her impassioned entreaty brought a quizzical expression to Husson’s face, but in her agony she didn’t notice. Still lying back over the bed, her dress pulled up by the movement of her body, hands fisted on the coverlet, she whispered:
“Promise … for God’s sake … Pierre won’t ever know?”
Even in his most depraved moments the idea of such a denunciation would never have entered Husson’s head. And it didn’t then, in those fateful seconds. But he couldn’t resist prolonging the voluptuous thrill the sight of Séverine’s agony afforded him. To make her hold her broken expression, he shrugged evasively.
Then he was outside. He couldn’t maintain the pose a moment longer, and he didn’t want to lose the most unexpected, venomous fruit the day had brought him.
Séverine heard the outside door slam. She got up, ran to Mme Anaïs, gripped her wrists, and whispered like a lunatic—“I’m going away, going away. You’ll forget all about me, won’t you? If anyone comes and asks after me, you don’t know where I am. If anyone forces me to come back, you won’t recognize me, right? Every month you’ll receive a thousand francs. More? No? Thank you, Madame Anaïs … if only you knew.…”