In Paradise: A Novel. Vol. I.

by Paul Heyse

CHAPTER I.

There are summer nights that are not made for sleep. The moon shines far brighter than at other times, as if a lamp were burning at its full height in the sleeping-room instead of a mere night-light. People strolling along, absorbed in thought and feeling the flagstones under their feet still warm--for they have been drinking in the fierce glow of the sun the livelong summer day--catch themselves in the act of crossing over out of the moonlight to the shady side, just as one does in the hot noontide. On such nights as this, sounds of life and merriment are heard throughout the city long after the police have sounded the hour for retiring; the couples that wander through the streets seem unable to find their way home; young fellows march along arm-in-arm, in long rows stretching the whole width of the road, as if advancing to battle against some invisible enemy, singing all the while as tenderly and sweetly as they know how, or else shrieking and yelling like a troop of wild Indians. Here and there, where a window stands open and a sonata of Beethoven floats out into the night, they suddenly hush their noise and listen, only to break out in a wild burst of applause the moment the music ceases. On such a night solitary youth lies dreaming, with open eyes, till long past midnight, of the glories of the future; and solitary age thinks sadly how glorious the past was; and at last they fall asleep over their musing, and slumber quietly, until some young cock in a neighboring roost, who cannot sleep himself, gives a glance up to heaven and begins to crow with such vigor at the setting moon, which he mistakes for the rising sun, that the sleepers start up again, throw off the bedclothes from their hot limbs, and creep to the window to see whether the night is really at an end. After this there is no more sleep for the aged; but they who are young lie down once more and soon make up for all that they have lost.

Such was the night that followed that Sunday. Of those in whose fate and adventures we are interested, none went to bed before midnight, though in truth some other sprite than the charm of the sultry night had possession of their hearts and senses. Even the good Angelica, who to the best of our knowledge was not in love, and who rejoiced moreover in that softest of pillows, a good conscience, sat at the open window of her little virgin bower, in which a lamp was dimly burning, half through the night, twining her curls and heavily sighing and dropping into a doze, until her head would strike against the window-sash, when she would start up and begin once more to spin her sorrowful summer-night's thoughts. She had been at Julie's door that afternoon to inquire what had been the upshot of this bad business. But no one was at home. And so she was waiting impatiently for the following day.

It was later still before Julie could bring herself to go to bed. The windows in her chamber stood open so as to let in the night-air through the openings in the closed blinds. But with the air the magical moonbeams streamed in too, and made a pattern on her green silk coverlet; her thoughts were lost in its mazes, so that she could not close her eyes. She felt as if she had never been at once so happy and so wretched. At heart she did not doubt for a moment that everything really was just as it stood in the baleful letter; that she would never possess him whom she loved. His own puzzling behavior, the way in which he had suddenly broken off and rushed out of the room, confirmed the anonymous accusation only too well. But the thought that she loved him, and that he returned her love, crowded out all others, and made her so glad in the depths of her heart, that no hostile fate could crush the rejoicing within her. So he is to "give her back her faith in her own heart!" What a senseless phrase! When had she ever believed in anything as she believed in the strength and truth and invincibility of this feeling, in the feeling that it was worth while to have lived through a long youth without love and happiness for the sake of this man, so that now she might lavish upon him a hoarded wealth of passion?

She could not help smiling when it occurred to her how often she had thought that she had done with the world, and could look back without regret upon the years of youth she had lost. What had become of those ten anxious years? Had she really lived in them or only dreamed of them? Was she not as young and inexperienced, as thirsty for happiness and as coy in its presence, as she had ever been in the first blooming years of her girlhood? Yes, she felt the courage of her earliest youth, when she still believed in miracles, bubbling up within her from an inexhaustible spring. She made no attempt to close her eyes to what could and would happen. But that this love, hopeless as it seemed, would be a source of unspeakable happiness to her, that in the sanctuary of her heart she would never cease to look upon this man as belonging to her--all this she admitted to herself in words so plain that, as she lay there wide awake in the moonlight, they sometimes found utterance in a half-audible soliloquy.

Then she marveled at the suddenness with which it had all come about, but she soon convinced herself again that this was just as it should be. She tried hard to picture to herself the kind of wife he might have. But she could not; it seemed to her impossible that he could ever have loved any one but herself. She closed her eyes and tried to recall his features to her mind. Singularly enough she met with no great success. His eyes were all that she could distinctly call up before her, and his voice seemed always to be close to her ear. She rose and stepped to the window, and opened the blinds a little to see if the night were not almost over. She herself did not know why she should thus look forward to the morning, for there was little hope that it would bring her anything new or good. But it would bring him, she could count on that. With burning lips she drew in the mild night-air, and listened to a love-song, which a solitary youth sang as he passed under her window.

She understood each word, and as he ended she repeated the closing verses softly, and sighed as she shut the blinds again. Then she lay down and at last fell asleep.

The day had long dawned outside, but the green twilight in which she lay caused her to dream on undisturbed. It struck seven, eight, nine, from the clock on the Theatinerkirche. Then at last she awoke, feeling as refreshed as if she had just emerged from bathing in the sea. It was some time before she could think clearly of all that had happened yesterday and would probably happen today, but as she did so a vague fear and anxiety came over her. She hastened to dress, so that she might go out and ask whether any letter had come. When at last she opened the door into the parlor, her figure wrapped in a loose robe, and her hair thrust carelessly under a pretty cap, her foot hit against some heavy object that took up the whole breadth of the threshold. As the blinds were closed in this room also, she did not see at first, owing to her short-sightedness, what it was that lay in her way. But the object immediately began to move of its own accord, and raised itself up before her, and she felt a cold tongue on her hand and saw that the intruder was no other than Jansen's venerable Newfoundland dog. The start he gave her was almost instantly lost in the greater one with which she found herself saying, "Where the dog is, the master will not be far away." And she was right, for there, in the back part of the room, leaning against the stove, was a dark figure with disheveled hair, standing as immovable in its place as she herself stood in the doorway, deprived of all power to move a limb or open her lips.

Just at this moment the other door opened, and the old servant stepped in and turned to the man at the stove with a gesture which was half indignant, half timid, but which said plainer than words that it had been impossible to turn away this uncomfortably early guest; he had made his way in by force.

"It is quite right, Erich," said his mistress, who had now completely recovered her composure. "I will ring when I want breakfast. And, by-the-way, I am not at home in case any one calls."

The old man retired, shrugging his shoulders, and muttering to himself. The moment he closed the door behind him, Julie stepped quickly up to Jansen, who stood in silence at the opposite end of the room, and cordially extended her hand.

"Thank you for coming," she said; and from her voice it would have been hard for any one to have believed how her heart beat as she uttered these few words, "But sit down. We have much to say to one another."

He bowed slightly, but remained standing where he was, and appeared not to notice that she had offered him her hand.

"Pardon this early visit," he said. "Your note did not reach me last evening. Early this morning, when I went into the studio--"

"Have you any suspicion as to who could have written the letter?" she interrupted, wishing to come to his aid. She had sunk down into a chair, and the dog lay beside her on the carpet, occasionally giving a growl of content as he felt her soft hand on his head.

"I think I know," replied Jansen, after a short pause. "I am certain that some one in this city is dogging all my steps, very likely in the interest of another. What was in that letter is nothing but the pure truth; and when I went to my studio this morning, I carried a letter in my pocket which I had written overnight, and which tells you almost the same thing. Here it is--if you would like to read it."

She shook her head slightly.

"What for, my dear friend, if it tells me nothing new?"

"Perhaps it may. But you are right; this piece of paper cannot prove to you the fact I most desire to have proved: that is, that I really wrote this letter last night before I knew of any other. That is something you can only believe from my personal assurance--and that is the reason of my being here."

"That is the reason? Oh! my friend, as if I needed such an assurance--as if your hasty departure yesterday had not told me that you did not trust yourself to stay because you--because you had only said what you did in a moment of self-forgetfulness--and yet, believe me, that was a thoughtless word that slipped from my pen, that only an explanation from you could give me back my faith in my own heart. I have never lost that faith. I believe to-day, as yesterday, that my heart knew perfectly well what it was about when it surrendered itself to you."

"You are an angel from heaven!" he cried, his grief breaking forth; "you seek to defend me even from myself. Yet for me with my hopeless lot to have forced myself into your quiet life, will never cease to be a crime. That is what I said to myself yesterday the moment I left your door. This letter attempted to say the same thing, and informed you also of my firm resolve never to show myself in your sight again. But the strange hand that tugs at the chords of my ruined life, and seeks to tear them asunder, has shattered this resolve. Now I owe you a longer confession than could be written in a letter. For not until you know all about me will you be able to understand that, though it was a sin, it was still a human one, that caused me so to forget myself; and that you need not withdraw your respect from me--though you do your heart--and your hand."

He was silent again for a moment; she, too, said nothing. She trembled, but she strove hard to appear calm, so that he would go on. How willingly she would have heard her fate in two words--her "to be or not to be!" What did she care for all the rest? But she felt that he had more to tell her, and she would not interrupt him.

"I hardly know," he continued, "how much our friend Angelica has told you about me. I am a peasant's son, and had to struggle through a hard childhood; and it was a long time before I could bend my stiff peasant's neck so that it fitted without chafing in the yoke of city etiquette. Few men have ever gone such strange ways as I have, always wavering between defiance and humility, audacity and shrinking, as well in my dealings with my fellow-men as in my art. I had a mother of the true old yeoman nobility--which is synonymous with true human nobility--at least in our part of the country. She finally succeeded in making a strong, silent man of my father, who had a streak of the tyrant in him. If she had lived longer, who knows whether I should ever have left her? But soon after her death I prevailed upon my father to let me go to the art-school at Kiel. I did little good there. There was a wild element among the scholars, and I was not the tamest. I always had a great contempt--perhaps because I was ashamed of my peasant's manners--for what we were pleased to call the Philistinism of the worthy citizens. That I, as an artist, was permitted all sorts of liberties that were denied to officials, scholars, and tradespeople, pleased me greatly; and I abused my freedom without stint. But as I moved in a very narrow circle, and seldom came in contact with any high type of humanity, I had no great field in which to display the profligacy of my thoughts and habits. A few wretched liaisons, and a number of silly and by no means edifying scrapes, were all that came of it.

"Then I moved to Hamburg. There the same wild life was continued on a somewhat larger scale. You will readily spare me the details. Now, when I think back on that time, I have to stop and reflect whether it really could have been I who wasted his days and nights in such shameful dissipation with such worthless companions. They were my Prince Hal days. 'The wild oats had to be sown.' But now I thank my good star for having led me safely, though by dubious ways, past all that kind of crime and wrong-doing which could not have been covered by this trite saying."

"Well, one evening, when my aching head and my gnawing rage at my own idiocy unfitted me for anything else, I went to the theatre, and saw for the first time an actress who was just entering on an engagement there. The piece was a flat, sensational, social drama, in which she took the part of the noble, generous, young wife, who plays the saving angel to the dissipated husband. It was a moral lecture that appealed directly to my own case; and as the sinner, even in his deepest degradation, seemed an enviable creature as compared with me--for he invariably fell into the arms of his guardian angel--I could not help wishing myself in his place; and so was led to examine that angel very carefully.

"She was certainly well worth looking at. A most charming young person, with a figure, a bearing, and a certain indolent grace in all her movements, such as I had never seen before. In addition to all this a childlike face, with dove-like eyes, and such an innocent, plaintive mouth, that you would have been willing to storm the very heavens just to bring a smile to those pretty lips. When this really appeared at the close of the play (for the young husband reformed), it was all over with me. As I noticed that half the audience--indeed, the entire male part--had gone mad over her, I considered my sudden infatuation not extraordinary; especially as I have a way of not being very slow in my feelings of love and hate. You have had experience of that yourself."

He paused for a moment, and gave her a hasty glance. But she did not stir, so breathlessly was she listening to him, her eyes fixed on the head of the dog, who lay quietly sleeping at her side.

"I will spare you any account of the further course of my love affair," he continued. "It is enough that in eight days I gained my case by ardor and flattery: and Lucie was my betrothed.

"The strange manner in which she bore herself in this position ought to have warned me. To my first passionate wooing she had opposed a prudishness and a maidenly reserve such as I had not expected to find in an actress, especially as she let me see plainly enough that she felt anything but indifferent toward me, and that the homage of an artist whose reputation was then in the ascendant was exceptionally flattering to her. But no sooner did I, somewhat taken aback by this severe maidenly reserve, make her a proposal that aimed at nothing less than our marriage and her retirement from the stage, than her tone changed. She began to treat the subject with greater lightness, to utter platitudes against marriages among artists, and in praise of the happiness of liberty; to tease me with moods, and to attract me again by all kinds of pretty coaxing; so that my passionate obstinacy was urged higher and higher, until at last I forced her, half against her will, to fix the wedding-day.

"Of course this excited the greatest amazement among my former companions, who could scarcely believe their ears. To those with whom I was most intimate I expatiated on the matter as an exceedingly practical undertaking, as a truly sensible marriage. I should never again find a being who was thus equally removed from Philistinism and evil courses. Besides, one cannot go on sowing wild oats forever; and it seemed to me that now, when my prospects had begun to seem quite favorable on account of a number of orders I had received, was the most suitable time to settle to a steadier life. This is what I said to my most intimate friends. I said nothing to the others. One of them, our Falstaff, who was the one most concerned at my loss, took me aside one day and asked whether I was really in earnest about this foolish affair. Upon my replying that I was sufficiently in earnest to forbid any contemptuous criticism upon my conduct, even from a good friend, he shrugged his shoulders and excused himself: he had not had the slightest intention of offending me, but he merely wished to call my attention to the fact that this freak of mine might cost me too dearly. Then, when I pressed him further, he remarked that 'in his opinion there were such things as artificial violets, and that the most genuine thing about this creature was her acting, which, unfortunately, she kept up in real life as well as on the stage.' And then followed a short sketch of her adventurous career, which this well-meaning man had collected, not without considerable trouble, from numberless inquiries at the theatres where she had appeared.

"Of course I expressed my appreciation of his kindness in the plainest possible words, broke with him once and for all, and ran off to my betrothed, to whom I excitedly related the whole chronicle of what I had heard about her way of life. The idea had never even entered my head that she would answer me in any other way than with a burst of burning indignation, and I had already been considering what kind words I should make use of in order to soothe her. But she heard me through without emotion, indeed without even blushing, so that for a moment I was fool enough to say to myself, 'I really believe she is so innocent that she doesn't even understand what I have been telling her.' But when I ceased speaking, she looked me full in the face, quite unabashed and with her most angelic expression, and said: 'This is all a lie, except in one particular. I committed a single wrong when I was a mere child, and that was the reason why I refused to become your wife. Do now as you like; you know what you take when you take me.'

"This confession, which she made with her irresistible melodramatic voice, blinded me completely; and I was more convinced than ever that all the rest of the talk about her deceitfulness and coquetry, and her heartless flirting with foolish young admirers, was a lie. 'No,' I cried, folding her in my arms, 'you shall not find yourself disappointed in me, you shall not find a narrow-minded Philistine, when you thought you were giving yourself up to a free artist's soul. What lies behind you shall cast no shadow over our future. If it is true that you love me, why then--' and here I quoted, slightly changing it to suit the occasion, a verse of poetry that I had read but a short time before and had thought very profound. 'Was I a saint before I asked your hand? And yet I was master of my fate, and knew what I did. No, let there be day before us and behind us night, that none may look upon us! Only promise me that in the future all your thoughts shall belong to me alone.'

"She sobbed violently in my arms, and made me the fairest promises. I almost believe that at that moment she did indeed mean what she said, for there was a sound spot in her that had not yet been touched by the worm--a longing for what was pure and good. If this had not been the case, how would it have been possible for me to have continued in my blindness longer than the few weeks of the honey-moon? But she herself seemed so happy in those first months, though we lived quite by ourselves--for I had broken with my old cronies, and had no particular desire to form new acquaintances, whom I could only have found among the Philistine class that I so heartily despised. Then, too, she grew more charming with each day. Once in a while, however, I caught her poring over her prompt-books; and then I told her bluntly, for I could see that her eyes were red with weeping, that she longed to be back behind the foot-lights again, that she missed the applause and grieved because she could not any longer turn the heads of the whole parquet. 'What can you be thinking of!' she laughed. 'In my condition! Why, I should feel like sinking through the deepest trap-door, I should be so ashamed!' In this way she would drive away my suspicions; and when at length her child was born, I really thought she was so taken up with household joys and cares that she cared for nothing else.

"It is true she was not such a foolish mother as to think her child an angel of beauty. It was a rather plain, unattractive-looking little thing--'the father over again,' remarked the women, very justly. But she played the rôle of mother with considerable talent; and not until a long time later, when she was sent to the sea-shore to recuperate, did it occur to me that she parted without any particular grief from the laughing and cooing little creature that clung so tightly to her. I staid at home and let her go over to Heligoland by herself, in the charge of an elderly friend of hers--an actress, but a woman bearing an irreproachable name. I happened to have a few orders that it was necessary to execute just as soon as possible--among others two busts of a rich wharfinger and his wife--and as our household, small as it was, made pretty heavy drains upon my purse, I felt that I ought not to let these chances slip through my fingers. It was our first separation, and I found it hard enough to bear. But, as I had to work hard and also to fill a mother's place toward the child, the first two weeks passed pretty quickly.

"But after that the little one began to give me a great deal of anxiety. Teething set in, there were bad days and worse nights, and the letters I received from my wife--in which she said she was doing admirably and had grown quite young again--did not tend to raise my spirits especially, for it appeared as if nothing were wanting to her happiness, not even her husband and child.

"Heretofore I had had neither disposition nor occasion for jealousy. Suddenly I was to learn what an abyss can be uncovered in a man's soul, into which everything sinks that he has before believed firm and true.

"I had been sitting up late; the child was very feverish, and toward midnight we had been obliged to call in the doctor. For the first time I thought with bitterness about my wife, who could stay at such a distance and nurse her own health while the little life, that should have been dearer to her than her own, was trembling in the balance. When the child had been quieted a little, so that I could think of taking some rest, it was a long time before I could close my eyes, though as a general thing I could reckon on my peasant's sleep under all circumstances. At last it came, but with it came dreams--dreams such as I would not have wished to the damned in hell. Always about her, in ever-new costumes, playing the old play of pledged and broken faith. Out of the last scene, where, in the very presence of her lover and with the quietest mien in the world, she sought to demonstrate to me her right to transfer her love from one man to another, until I sprang forward with a cry of fury to seize her by the hair--out of this wretched vision of hell I was awakened by the crying of my child; so that I did not take time to wipe the cold sweat from my forehead, but ran into the nursery quite prepared to find Death standing at the head of the little bed. But once again it passed, and in the morning we were both able to get a couple of hours of quiet sleep. Then, at last, I sat down and wrote to my wife just how things stood.

"For some days before, I had not sent her any very encouraging reports. Any other woman would have returned at once, and not have tried to excuse herself on the ground that the water-cure ought not to be interrupted. But she--enough! I must try and control myself when I speak of her. After all the poor creature cannot be blamed because she had no heart, and because my love and passion could not conjure up one within her breast.

"But at the time I wrote in all the roughness and bitterness of my mood, and insisted upon her immediate return. I had almost forgotten the dreams of the night before. But a little later, when I was taking a walk through the city, chance willed it that they should again be recalled to my mind.

"I met a gossiping acquaintance, who had also been passing a few weeks at the island. Heaven knows how it came about that I stopped him and inquired about my wife. He was very much surprised to hear that she had been there, indeed that she was there still. As in such a small place everybody met everybody else, he could not understand how so beautiful a woman could have escaped his notice. 'To be sure, she has lived in great retirement,' I stammered, and he found this very natural and praiseworthy of a charming young lady, and hoped the cure would be successful, and so left me; while I stood there like a fool for a full quarter of an hour, staring vacantly at the same flag-stone, and blocking peoples' way as if I had been a stopping-post. Yet she must have been there; letters had daily passed back and forth; and then, what earthly reason could she have for trying to deceive me in this respect? But then again: you will readily understand that this incident, trifling as it was in itself, was well calculated to add new fuel to the fever that was raging within me.

"I could not expect her back before the following day. How I survived the intervening hours will always remain a mystery to me. I was incapable of any occupation, of any connected thought or action. I had just sufficient strength and reason left to sit by the side of the poor, feverish child, and apply the ice-bandages, and count the hairs on its forehead.

"Even when night came I would not leave my post. I dreaded to dream. Then came the morning again, and noon and afternoon, and still no news. But at length a drosky drove up, the house-door was opened, the stairs creaked under a light step, I sprang to my feet and rushed to meet her; just then she entered the door, and my first look in her face strengthened all my horrible suspicions.

"Or no; it was not her face. I have no right to do this actress an injustice; she had her face as completely under control as ever--the innocent violet eyes, the Madonna mouth, the clear forehead--and yet it was her face that sent a shudder to my inmost heart. Was that the mien of a mother, hastening to her child that lay at the door of death? of a wife returning, after such anxious weeks of separation, to the husband whom she pretended to have married for love?

"Enough! The fate of our lives was decided in the first few hours. But I was crafty too, and played my rôle bravely. That we should refrain from all demonstrations of tenderness, while our child lay in such danger, was so natural--she herself could find nothing wrong in this. But on the following morning, after the night had brought a change for the better and we were able to breathe freely once more, she said to me--and I can see her before me now, as she knelt at a trunk and turned over the gay contents trying to find a comfortable dress to put on, for she had not taken off her clothes during the night--'Do you know, Hans,' she said, looking up at me with her dove-like eyes, half petulantly, half pleadingly, 'do you know that it isn't at all nice of you not to have paid me a single compliment upon how well I am looking? I left a gallant husband, and find a cold-hearted bear. Come, as a punishment, I will let you kiss this little slipper, that I might have put on the neck of the whole male population of the island if I had wanted to.'

"'Lucie,' said I, 'I want first to make a request of you.'

"'About what?' asked she, innocently.

"'That you will swear to me, by the life of our child, that it is only a devilish delusion, sprung from my jealous dreams, that makes me think you do not come back to me what you were when you went away.'

"I had arranged this sentence word for word, just as one loads with the greatest care a gun with which one wants to take sure aim. And I did not miss the mark. She suddenly flushed purple, bent down her head over the trunk, and fumbled nervously with the heap of sashes and scarfs.

"But she quickly recovered herself.

"'You have had bad dreams?' she asked, still quite unabashed. 'What did you dream, then?'

"And I replied: 'That you had been unfaithful to me. It is nonsense; I know that you can give me back my peace by a single word. But, unless you speak this word--did you understand me, Lucie? By the life of our child, who lies there barely escaped from death--I only want to hear one word. I cannot reproach myself with any neglect of my duty toward you. Do you hear me, Lucie? Why don't you answer me? Can't you bear my look?'

"She actually succeeded in forcing herself to look at me, but there was not the flash of innocent pride, of offended womanly honor; it was an unsteady, flickering defiance, and the flaring up of a hostile feeling, that I read in her eyes.

"'I have no answer to such a question,' said she, with a gesture that carried me back to the time when she was on the stage. 'You insult me, Hans. Let us talk about something else. I will pardon you for the child's sake, and because of the anxiety you have been suffering.'

"I was still so under her influence that I hesitated for a moment whether to mistrust the voice in my heart, or this serpent look. She had risen, and was standing at the window, her face turned away and her hand before her eyes, such a picture of insulted majesty and innocence that I already began to curse my heat, and to accuse myself of having done the greatest injustice and wrong that can be done to a helpless woman. But just as I was on the point of going up to her and trying the power of kind words, I heard my dog give a strange sort of a growl and bark, as if he were angry and provoked; for which I could see no reason. He did not like the woman. Either she had never known how, or else she had never thought it worth while, to gain his favor. But heretofore he had seemed to feel the greatest indifference toward her, and I could not understand why her offended speech and bearing should now enrage him. The truth is he was not paying the slightest attention to her, but seemed to have been excited by something that he had dragged out of the pile of things she had taken from her trunk. I called out to him to lie down and keep quiet; he was still in a moment; but, wagging his tail violently, he ran up to me, holding something in his mouth which he laid on my knee. It was a man's glove.

"Can you believe it?--my first feeling at the sight of this evidence was a wild joy and satisfaction. I was suddenly at one with myself again, and the wretched feeling of shame that perhaps after all I had let my suspicious heat get the better of my reason, gave place to an icy calmness.

"'If you would only turn round,' I said, 'perhaps you would speak in a different tone. Without knowing it or wishing it, you have brought me a present from your journey for which I ought to thank you.'

"As she turned round, even she was not actress enough to repress a gesture of terror.

"'I swear to you--she stammered, pale as death.

"'Very good,' I said; 'that is precisely what I have been asking you to do. But--do you hear?--consider well what you swear and by what you swear it. By the life of the innocent creature lying in that chamber, by that God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation--'

"'I don't know what you mean--I--I have done no wrong and have no need to swear. This glove, Heaven knows--'

"'Heaven does know!' I shrieked, my smouldering rage breaking out furiously.

"I reached out my hand toward her; everything reeled before my eyes; I have no further recollection of what I said and did at that moment, except that I was very near seizing her by her long locks, as in my dream, and dragging her across the room and down the stairs, and casting her out into the street. I am sure, however, that I did not touch her, but my looks and words must have been so relentless and unmistakable that she herself found it advisable to leave me. Half an hour later I was alone again with my child.

"That very day I received a letter from her, full of well-turned periods and insidious accusations. I read it without emotion. I was like a well that has been choked forever--nothing can make its water bubble up again. I answered this letter with a single word--'Swear!' No second letter came; a last remnant of human feeling, sunk deep in superstition, made it impossible for her to utter a lie that might be revenged upon her child.

"I waited three days. Then I wrote her a note that contained no word of reproach, but simply said that it would be impossible for me to share my life with her longer. I told her I would provide for her as I had done heretofore, under the single condition that she would take her maiden name again and never make any claim upon the child. When I wrote this--I can't help confessing my foolishness to you--something within me said, 'She will never consent to this condition. She will come and fall at your feet, with a full confession of her guilt, and pray you rather to kill her than to separate her from her child.' Then--what might I not have done then?--it makes me shudder to think of it. I almost believe I should have pardoned her--and been wretched ever after, with my honor wounded and my confidence shaken at the very roots. But I had loved her too dearly for me to become master of my weakness so quickly.

"She spared me the temptation. In a few days her answer came; she refrained from making any explanations, which she knew would never be satisfactory to a person so inclined to be suspicious as I was. Great God! I suspicious--I, whom a lie would have quieted again! She accepted what I had proposed to her, intended to return to the stage--for which she was undoubtedly born--thanked me for all the goodness I had shown her, hoped all would go well with me, and much more--a letter well written, friendly, and icy cold.

"Not a syllable was said about the child!"