Belle De Jour Read Online Free PDF

Pierre pressed against Séverine. For several seconds he lay on the warm shores of love, before becoming aware of the woman beside him. Then in a voice redolent of dreams he murmured, “Darling. My beloved love.”
    Séverine switched on the low bedside light. She needed to see that total felicity, void of thought, implicit in her husband’s words. Veiled by thick silk the light spread softly through the room. It barely touched Pierre, who didn’t stir; but the elemental mystery of a face belonging to the shadows and bearing only the semblance of life, which Séverine had attempted to surprise, had now fled from his features. Pierre came to.
    “How wonderful to find you here again,” he said. “I’ve missed you so much.”
    His eyes opened suddenly.
    “Of course,” he continued slowly. “Poor little Marco. He was Italian, you know. He used to horse around with me.”
    This time Séverine had only to stroke Pierre’s hair to calm him down. Softly he added, “Already I’ve stopped grieving for him. I’m too full of you. There’s not much left over for anyone else.”
    “Hush. If everyone were like you, Pierre, life would be a whole lot better. Do you know,” Séverine went on lovingly, “I’ve been thinking about you so much this morning.”
    “Have you been awake long? But it’s barely light. Weren’t you feeling well? And there I was sleeping like a log.”
    Séverine laughed tenderly.
    “Don’t go and reverse our roles now,” she said. “I was just going to tell you how much you mean to me, and ask you how I can make you happier …”
    She stopped short, as if she’d struck a false note. There was surprise and a good deal of embarrassment in her husband’s face.
    “Please,” he muttered. “Don’t be too kind to me. It’s you who are my child.”
    “In any case,” Séverine continued, “I want to take more of an interest in your life. I want to know everything you do, all about your patients, your operations. I don’t help you in a single thing.”
    All this roused in Pierre feelings of guilt rather thangratitude. Like all sensitive strong men in love, he imagined that the slightest trouble Séverine took on his behalf was a sort of crime he had committed against her.
    “I lost hold of myself last night,” he said, “and now I’ve gone and made you anxious over me. I’m really ashamed. But don’t worry, darling, that’s the last you’ll see of that.”
    Séverine felt faintly impatient. Her desire to love was so difficult to put into practice. Every attempt she made seemed to turn back on itself. She wanted to serve Pierre, and instead he constantly put himself at her service.
    She wanted to share in his work, his concerns, his reading, his thoughts. But despite her desires, Séverine felt powerless to enter his world: her own upbringing, her own abilities, her very desire, caused her to fail in this activity, never very congenial to her.
    With growing confusion and an immense desire to give she murmured, “Then what can I do for you, my darling?”
    The tone of her voice made Pierre lean toward her. They looked at each other as if suddenly discovering themselves. And the prayer the young woman read flickering deep in those gray eyes was this:
    Ah, Séverine, if only you could stop giving me your body just for my own enjoyment, and enjoy it yourself, lose yourself in such happiness.
    His look was so powerful, so heavy with appeal, that Séverine actually felt aroused as never before. What Husson had made her feel the previous day she feltagain, but accompanied now with all the joy of love. If Pierre had taken her then, with those hands of his whose strength she knew so well, with those limbs whose muscles had so often played so proudly before her eyes, surely she would have arched beneath the ecstasy he asked of her. But at the very moment he reached for her she saw a gleam of gratitude in his eyes. Once more she let herself be taken, feeling maternal.
    Later they lay without