XX
Jean’s convalescence was rapid.
Once the fever had left him, his youth and strength soon gained the upper hand. But nevertheless he could not forget, poor fellow, and he was very unhappy. At times he fell into moods of wild despair, and nourished almost savage notions of vengeance. But this phase was soon over, and then he would say to himself that he would willingly endure whatever humiliations she might choose to inflict, if he might see her and possess her again, as before.
His new friend, the naval officer, came again from time to time, and sat by his bedside. He spoke to him almost as one would speak to a sick child, although he was scarcely as old as Jean.
“Jean,” he said one day very gently.... “Jean, you know, about that woman—if my telling you this sets your mind at rest—I give you my word of honour that I have never set eyes on her again since that night that you remember. You see, there are many things, my dear Jean, that you don’t know about yet. Some day you will realise; you, too, that one must not take such a small matter so much to heart.... In any case, as far as that woman is concerned, I am quite willing to swear to you never to go near her again.”
This was the only reference to Cora made by either of them, and the promise actually restored Jean’s peace of mind.
Oh yes! he realised clearly now, poor fellow, that there must be “many things that he did not know about yet,” that there must be—commonplaces, no doubt, to people moving in a social sphere more sophisticated than his own—instances of cold-blooded, subtle perversity, outside the scope of his imagination.
Little by little, moreover, he grew fond of this friend, whom he could not understand; this friend once cynical, but now grown kind, who regarded life with inexplicable serenity and light-heartedness, and who had come to offer him his protection as an officer, by way of amends for the suffering he had caused him.
But Jean had no wish for protection; neither promotion nor anything else appealed to him any longer; his heart, so young still, was filled with the bitterness of this first agony of despair.