If she had been poor, at least, suffering from want! But she had just come into her mother's money, the entire furniture of a house, and a number of shares, some of doubtful value, but nevertheless representing two or three thousand crowns; moreover, she was still receiving her pay regularly from the theatre.
I could not understand her attitude ... until suddenly I remembered her landlady and intimate friend.
She was an abominable, elderly woman, with the suspicious manners of a procuress; nobody knew how she lived; she was always in debt, yet always extravagantly and strikingly dressed; somehow she managed to ingratiate herself with people, and she always ended by asking them for a small loan, eternally bewailing her miserable existence. A shady character, who hated me because I saw through her.
Now I suddenly remembered an incident which had happened two or three months ago, but which had not interested me at the time. The woman had extracted a promise from a friend of Marie's to lend her a thousand crowns. The promise had remained a promise. Eventually Marie, giving way to pressure and anxious to save the reputation of her friend, who was badly compromised, guaranteed to find the money, and actually raised the sum. But instead of gratitude she reaped nothing but reproaches from her friend, and when it came to explanations, the old-woman insisted on her perfect innocence and laid the full blame on Marie's shoulders. I had at the time expressed my dislike and distrust of her, and urged Marie to have nothing to do with an individual whose manipulations came very close to blackmail.
But she had exonerated her false friend at the time.... Later on she told a different story altogether, talked of a misunderstanding; in the end the whole incident became "an invention of my evil imagination."
Possibly this woman had suggested to Marie the vile idea of "presenting me with the bill." It must have been so, for the suggestion had not been made easily and was most unlike her. I tried to make myself believe it, hope it.
If she had merely asked me for the money which she had invested in the paper, the money which had been lost through her fault—that would have been female mathematics. Or, if she had insisted on an immediate marriage! But she had no wish to be married, I was sure of that. It was a question of paying for the love, the kisses she had given me. It was payment she demanded.... Supposing I sent her in my bill: for my work according to time and quality, for the waste of brain power, of nerve force, for my heart's blood, my name, my honour, my sufferings; the bill for my career, ruined, perhaps, for ever.
But no, it was her privilege to send in the first bill; I took no exception to that.
I spent my evening at a restaurant, wandered through the streets and pondered the problem of degradation. Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? It must be because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means the disintegration of force.
The same argument applies to the life of the community where everybody strives to reach the material or spiritual summits. Thence comes the tragic feeling which seizes us in the contemplation of failure, tragic as autumn, sickness and death. This woman, who had not yet reached her thirtieth year, had been young, beautiful, frank, honest, amiable, strong and well-bred; in two short years she had been so degraded, had fallen so low.