2
“Forgive me if I put off from day to day coming to see you; forgive me if even to-day I cannot decide to come and if I write to you instead. Forgive me if I even venture to ask you whether it may not be necessary that we see each other no more. If I hurt you and offend you, if I—which may God forbid—cause you pain, forgive me, forgive me! Perhaps I procrastinated a little from indecision, but much more because I considered that I had no other choice.
“There has been between our two lives, between our two souls, a rare moment of happiness which was a special boon, a special grace of heaven. Do you not think so too? Oh, if only I had the words to tell you how grateful I am in my innermost soul for that happiness! If later I ever look back upon my life, I shall always see that happiness gleaming in between the ugliness and the blackness, like a star of light. We received it as such, as a gift of light. And I venture to ask you if that gift is not a thing for you and me to keep sacred?
“Can we do that if I continue to see you? You, yes, I have no doubt of you: you will be strong to keep it sacred, our sacred happiness, especially because you have already had your struggle, as you confided to me on that sacred evening. But I, can I too be strong, especially now that I know that you have been through the struggle? I doubt myself, I doubt my own force; I am afraid of myself. There is cruelty in me, a love of destruction, something of a savage. As a boy I took pleasure in destroying beautiful things, in breaking and soiling them. The other day, Jules brought me some roses to my room; in the evening, as I sat alone, thinking of you and of our happiness—yes, at that very moment—my fingers began to fumble with a rose whose petals were loose; and, when I saw that one rose dispetalled, there came a cruel frenzy within me to tear and destroy them all; and I rumpled every one of them. I only give you a small instance, because I do not wish to give you larger instances, from vanity, lest you should know how bad I am. I am afraid of myself. If I saw you again and again and yet again, what should I begin to feel and think and wish, unconsciously? Which would be the stronger, my soul or the beast that is in me? Forgive me for laying bare my dread before you and do not despise me for it. Up to the present I have not attempted a struggle, in the sacred world of our happiness. I saw you, I saw you often before I knew you; I guessed you as you were; I was permitted to speak to you; it was given me to love you with my soul alone: I beseech you, let it remain so. Let me continue to keep my happiness like this, to keep it sacred, a thousand times sacred. I think it worth while to have lived, now that I have known that: happiness, the highest. And I am afraid of the struggle which would probably come and pollute that sacred thing.
“Will you believe me when I swear to you that I have reflected deeply on all this? Will you believe me when I swear to you that I suffer at the thought of never being permitted to see you again? And, above all, will you forgive me when I swear to you that I am acting in this way because I think that I am doing right? Oh, I am grateful to you and I love you as a soul of light alone, of nothing but light!
“Perhaps I am wrong to send you this letter. I do not know. Perhaps presently I will tear up what I have written....”
Yet he had sent her the letter.
There was great bitterness within her. She had struggled once, had conquered herself and, in a sacred moment, had confessed both struggle and conquest; she knew that fate had compelled her to do so; she now knew what she would lose through her confession. For a short moment, a single evening perhaps, she had been worthy of her god and his equal. Now she was so no longer; for this reason also she felt bitter. And she felt bitterest of all because the thought dared to rise within her:
“A god! Is he a god? Is a god afraid of the struggle?”
Then her threefold bitterness changed to despair, black despair, a night which her eyes sought to penetrate in order to see something where they saw nothing, nothing; and she moaned low and wrung her hands, sinking into a heap before the window and staring at the trams which, with the tinkling of their bells, ran pitilessly to and fro.