"Ah, no: ah, no:" said Madame von Marwitz, laying her supplicating hand on the sleeve of Karen's nightdress. "You do not understand. How could you—young and cold and flawless—understand my heart, my wild, stained heart, Karen, my fierce and desolate and broken heart. You are air and water; I am earth and fire; how could you understand my darkness and my rage?" She spoke, sobbing, with a sincerity dreadful and irrefragable, as if she stripped herself and showed a body scarred and burning. With all the forces of her nature she threw herself on Karen's pity, tearing from herself, with a humility far above pride and shame, the glamour that had held Karen's heart to hers. Deep instinct guided her spontaneity. Her glamour, now, must consist in having none; her nobility must consist in abasement, her greatness in being piteous.
"Listen to me, Karen," she sobbed, "The world knows but one side of me—you have known but one side;—even Tallie, who knows so much, who understands so much—does not know the other—the dark and tortured soul. I am not a good woman, Karen, the blood that flows in my veins is tainted, ambiguous. I have sinned. I have been savage and dastardly; but it has always been in a madness when I could not seize my better self: flames seem to sweep me on. Listen, Karen, you are so strong, so calm, how could you dream of what a woman's last wild passion can be, a woman whose whole soul is passion? Love! it is all that I have craved. Love! love! all my inner life has been enmeshed in it—in craving, in seeking, in destroying. It is like a curse upon me, Karen. You will not understand; yet that love of love, is it not so with all us wretched women; do we not long, always, all of us, for the great flame to which we may surrender, the flame that will appease and exalt us, annihilate us, yet give us life in its supremacy? So I have always longed; and not grossly; mine has never been the sensual passion; it has been beauty and the heights of life that I have sought. And my curse has been that for me has come no appeasement, no exaltation, but only, always, a dark smouldering of joylessness. With my own hand I broke the great and sacred devotion that blessed my life, because I was thus cursed. Jealousy, the craving for a more complete possession, for the ecstasy I had not found, blind forces in my blood, drove me on to the destruction of that precious thing. I wrecked myself, I killed him. Oh, Karen, you know of whom I speak." Convulsively, the blackness of her memories assailing her in their old forms of horror, Madame von Marwitz sobbed, burying her face in the bed-clothes, her hand forgetting to clutch at Karen's sleeve. She lifted her face and the tears streamed from under her closed lids. "Let me not think of it or I shall go mad. How could I, having known that devotion, sink to the place where you have seen me? Be pitiful. He needed me so much—I believed. My youth was fading; I was growing old. Soon the time was to come when no man's heart would turn to me. Be pitiful. You do not know what it is to look without and see life slowly growing dark and look within and see only sinister memories. It came to me like late sunlight—like cool, sweet water—his love. I believed in it. I loved him. Oh—" she sobbed, "how I loved him, Karen! How my heart was torn with sick jealousy when I saw that his had turned from me to you. I loved you, Karen, yet I hated you. Open your generous heart to me, my child; do not spurn me from you. Understand how it may be that one can strike at the thing one loves. I knew myself in the grasp of an evil passion, but I could not tear it from me. I even feared, with a savage fear that seemed to eat into my brain, that you responded to his love. Oh, Karen, it was not I who spoke those shameful words, when I found you with him, but a creature maddened with pain and jealousy, who for days had fought against her madness and knew when she spoke that she was mad. When I had sent him from me, when he was gone from my life, and I knew that all was over, the evil fury passed from my brain like a mist. I knew myself again. I saw again the sweet and sacred places of my life. I saw you, Karen. Oh, my child," again the pleading hand trembled on Karen's sleeve, "it has not all been misplaced, your love for me; not all illusion. I am still the woman who has loved you through so many years. You will not let one hour of frenzy efface our happy years together?"
The words, the sobbing questions that waited for no answer, the wailing supplications, had been poured forth in one great upwelling. Through the tears that streamed she had seen Karen's face in blurred glimpses, lying in profile to her on its pillow. Now, when all had been said and her mind was empty, waiting, she passed her hand over her eyes, clearing them of tears, and fixed them on Karen.
And silence followed. So long a silence that wonder came. Had she understood? Was she half unconscious? Had all the long appeal been wasted?
But Karen at last spoke and the words, in their calm, seemed to the listening woman to pass like a cold wind over buds and tendrils of reviving life, blighting them.
"I am sorry for you," said Karen. "And I understand."
Madame von Marwitz stared at her for another silent moment. "Yes," she then said, "you are sorry for me. You understand. It is my child's great heart. And you forgive me, Karen?"
Again came silence; then, restlessly turning her head as if the effort to think pained her, Karen said, "What do you mean by forgiveness?"
"I mean pity, Karen," said Madame von Marwitz. "And compassion, and tenderness. To be forgiven is to be taken back."
"Taken back?" Karen repeated. "But I do not feel that I love you any longer." She spoke in a dull, calm voice.