For a moment I tried to blame myself; the thought that the fault was mine would have been a comfort to me, for it would have made her shame seem less. But try as I would, I did not succeed, for had I not taught her the cult of the beautiful? the love of high ideals? the longing to do noble acts? While she adopted the vulgarities of her theatrical friends, I had improved, I had acquired the manners and language of fashionable society, I had learned that self-control which keeps emotion in check and is considered the hall-mark of good breeding. I had become chaste in love, anxious to spare modesty, not to offend against beauty and seemliness, for thus only can we forget the brutality of an act which to my mind is much more spiritual than physical.
I was rough sometimes, it is true, but never vulgar. I killed, but never wounded. I called a spade a spade, but never hinted and insinuated; my ideas were my own, prompted by the situations in which I happened to find myself; I never tried to dazzle with the witticisms of musical comedies or comic papers.
I loved cleanliness, purity, beauty in my daily surroundings; I preferred to refuse an invitation to accepting it and appearing badly dressed. I never received her in dressing-gown and slippers; I may not always have been able to offer a guest more than bread and butter and a glass of beer, but there was always a clean table-cloth.
I had not set her a bad example; it was not my fault that she had deteriorated. Her love for me was dead, therefore she did not want to please me any longer. She belonged to the public, it was that fact which had made her the wanton who could calmly present her bill for so many nights of pleasure....
During the next few days I shut myself up in my library. I mourned for my love, my splendid, foolish, divine love. All was over, and the battlefield on which the struggle had raged was silent and still. Two dead and so many wounded to satisfy a woman who was not worth a pair of old shoes! If her passion had at least been roused by the longing for motherhood, if she had been guided by the unrealised instincts which force those unfortunates who are mothers on the streets! But she detested children; in her eyes motherhood was degrading. Unnatural and perverse woman that she was, she debased the maternal instinct to a vulgar pleasure. Her race was doomed to extinction because she was a degenerate, in the process of dissolution; but she concealed this dissolution under high-sounding phrases, proclaimed that it was our duty to live for higher ends, for the good of humanity at large.
I loathed her now, I tried to forget her. I paced the room, up and down, up and down, before the rows of book-shelves, unable to rid myself of the accursed night-mare which haunted me. I had no desire for her, or for her company, for she inspired me with disgust; and yet a deep compassion, an almost paternal tenderness made me feel responsible for her future. I knew that if I left her to her own devices, she would go under, and end either as the mistress of her late husband, or the mistress of all the world.
I was powerless to lift her up, powerless to struggle out of the morass into which we had fallen. I resigned myself to remain tied to her, even if I had to witness and share in her downward course. She was dragging me down with her—life had become a burden to me, I had lost all enthusiasm for my work. The instinct of self-preservation, hope, were dead. I wanted nothing, desired nothing. I had developed into a complete misanthrope; I frequently turned away from the door of my restaurant and, forgoing dinner, returned home, threw myself on my sofa and buried myself under my rugs. There I lay, like a wild beast that has received its death wound, rigid, with an empty brain, unable to think or sleep, waiting for the end.
One day, however, I was sitting in a back room of my restaurant, a private room where lovers meet and shabby coats hide themselves, both afraid of the daylight. All at once a well-known voice woke me from my reverie: a man wished me a good afternoon.
He was an unsuccessful architect, a lost member of our late Bohemia, which was now scattered to all the winds.
"You are still among the living, then?" he said, sitting down opposite me.