The adulteress

We went down the staircase past the haunted gallery. The house seemed different now ... at peace, in a way, contented, almost laughing at us. I was very fanciful. It was all part of building up excuses, trying to plead extenuating circumstances, fate perhaps, for what I had done.

The sounds from the fair were louder out of doors.

We walked together back to Eversleigh. In the shrubbery he kissed me passionately.

"We belong together," he said. "Never forget it."

Then I tore myself away and ran into the house.

I made for my room and on the way I passed Uncle Carl's room. On impulse I looked in. He was sitting in his chair and he looked grotesque, I thought, out of bed with his long nose and pointed chin, his parchment skin and his very lively dark eyes.

"Oh," he said, "have you been to the fair, Carlotta?"

"Carlotta?" I said. "Carlotta's dead. It's Zipporah."

"Of course. Of course. You looked so like her ... for the moment I'd forgotten."

I felt shaken. I thought: It shows. What have I done? It has branded me in some way. He knew... . That is why he called me Carlotta.

"Is Jessie in?" he asked.

"She may be still at the fair."

"She'll be in now, I'll swear. It's nearly supper time."

I left him. I could not bear those lively eyes looking at me. I was sure they saw something different about me.

I went to my room. I looked at myself in the mirror. "Carlotta," he had said. Yes ... I looked different. There was something about me ... a sparkle ... a shine almost. My eyes, which had been a darkish blue, looked darker ... almost a violet shade.

I had changed.

"I have become an adulteress," I murmured.

I had exhausted all the excuses. In fact there were none. For the next afternoon I was lying on the bed behind the brocade curtains with my love. I was crafty. I said to myself: I have already sinned against Jean-Louis, against my honor, my principles ... nothing can change that. And to go again, to be with him ... to experience that emotional turmoil ... what does it matter? I am already an adulteress. I shall still be one however many times I give way to temptation.

So I went and the experience seemed even more alluring than before. Perhaps I had managed to quieten my conscience. I had stepped over the border of what seemed to me— in my role of the old Zipporah—as depravity. I was there, so what difference could one more step make?

I was in love with Gerard, which was different from loving Jean-Louis. Jean-Louis was kind, considerate, tender, all that I had wanted in a husband until I met Gerard. It might be that Gerard could not compare with Jean-Louis in tenderness and consideration ... I did not know. That fact appalled me. I did not really know this man and yet the physical attraction between us was so overwhelming as to be irresistible.

So I went back to my white and gold brocade bed and I learned that I had never really known myself before. I was a deeply sensuous woman; having overcome my first terrors, subdued my intruding conscience, I could now give myself to passion and I gave myself completely and utterly.

And there we lay and once more the sounds of the fair were our background and the house seemed to be applauding because it knew that I had betrayed my husband in a manner which I would never have thought possible.

I could think of nothing else but being alone with Gerard, of exciting and erotic lovemaking. I was a different person. I did not know this woman I had become and yet she was myself ... and if I were honest I would admit that I would not have her otherwise.

I was vital, I was alive as I had not been before. Everything seemed to have changed. I had stepped out of a way of life where I had gone on at a slow steady trot for so many years. Now I was flying into realms hitherto unknown. Oh, I was fanciful. But this was such a wonderful thing that had happened to me.

During the days that followed we were meeting regularly. We could not go to the house now but there was a cottage belonging to Enderby and this was uninhabited because the gardener who had occupied it had died suddenly and it was being renovated before it was given to one of the other servants. There were ladders and wood shavings about the place. But there was some furniture and it was a place where we could meet. We could no longer go to the house, of course, for we should have been detected at once. Gerard had plans for taking me in, and for visiting me. He liked to discuss them but we both knew that they could not be satisfactorily carried out. So we met at the gardener's cottage after supper each evening. I was sometimes late coming back to Eversleigh.

It was dangerous, I knew; there must have been a change in me. Sometimes I could sense both Uncle Carl and Jessie watching me. They would both be experts on eroticism I was sure. Perhaps living as I had through such ecstatic moments, first at Enderby and then in the cottage, had had its effect on me and connoisseurs such as those two recognized this.