The Reinvention of Love Read Free Page A

turned and saw me watching her, and it was as though we had just discovered each other for the first time. I cannot fully explain it. All I know is that I could not roll my feelings back up, twist them into position and secure them into a place of propriety. I was undone. Nothing could be the same.
    Later, we sat in the garden, side by side, watching the children play. Adèle was telling me a story about a ring her mother had given her that she always wore on her right hand. I asked to see the ring, thinking that she would allow me to hold her hand while I looked at it, but instead she removed it from herfinger and took my hand in her own. She slid the ring onto my finger. It fitted perfectly. We both looked down at it. After a few moments I took the ring off my finger and gave it back to her. She returned it to her own hand. We said not a word.
    I lingered as long as I could that day, but I couldn’t bear to have Victor return while I was there, and so I left well before supper. Adèle walked me to the door, then to the front gate, then out to the pavement. I turned and waved when I was halfway home and she was still standing there, watching me walk down the street.
    The next day I woke relieved that I had not declared myself. I valued my friendship with the Hugos and did not want it disturbed. I would simply live with my new feelings for Adèle. There was no need to tell her about them or acknowledge them in any way. Things would remain as they were.
    But I could not concentrate on my work that morning, and the moment I knew that the Hugos would be finishing their noon meal, I was hurrying up their front walk.
    I found Adèle alone in the drawing room, sitting with her hands folded on her lap, staring out the window. She leapt up when she saw me. I didn’t even have time to announce myself. She was at my side, her hand on my arm.
    “The children have gone to the gardens with Victor,” she said. “We don’t have long.” She led me up the stairs and along the hallway towards the bedroom she shared with her youngest daughter, little Adèle.
    It felt wrong to lie on the bed where she must have sometimes lingered with Victor, so we lay down on the carpet. The curtains lifted at the window. Adèle put her hands up to my face and traced my forehead, the bones around my eyes, the line from my nose down to my lips. I closed my eyes. I thought that I would die, or that I had already died. I am an ugly man. No one had ever touched me like that.
    Adèle rolled on top of me. Her dress rustled like autumnleaves. I could smell the dust in the carpet.
    “My treasure,” she said. “My little one. I have been so lonely.” She kissed me. I opened my eyes.

    Charles Sainte-Beuve

    It is at this point in the story that I should tell you my secret. It is a secret I have borne all my life with shame, and concealed from almost everyone. It is at this moment in the story, after all, that I would be forced to tell Adèle my secret.
    But, not yet. Oh, not yet.

    Instead, I will tell you something about Victor.
    Victor’s father was a general in Napoleon’s army. His mother, like mine, was the daughter of a sea captain. I thought these were romantic beginnings, but they weren’t noble enough for my vainglorious friend. He decided to make his own heraldry, designing a false family crest and having a signet ring made with his invented ancestral motto.
Ego Hugo
. No two words were more perfectly married than those two.
    Victor was insatiable in all things, in all ways. And while this worked for him, it was hard on everyone else.
    It was proving impossible for Adèle.
    So, when I did tell her my secret, that afternoon as we lay together on the floor in the room she shared with her youngest daughter, she was not shocked and surprised, as I thought she’d be.
    She welcomed it.

BUT I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF. I am following not chronology, but passion, rushing off to Adèle whenever I am able, forgetting that there are events in this love