She tried to calm me, but I interrupted her and continued—
"In compliance with your wishes we married under the dotal system. In spite of it, however, I have wasted your dowry to cover sums which I had recklessly guaranteed. My greatest grief now is the fact that you cannot touch the proceeds of my works. Send for a notary at once, so that I can settle on you all my nominal or real property. ... Above everything, promise that you will return to the stage which you gave up to please me."
She refused to listen any further, treated my confession as a joke, advised me to go to sleep and rest, and assured me that everything would come right, and that I was not on the point of death.
I seized her hand, exhausted. I begged her to stay with me until I had fallen asleep. Grasping her little hand more firmly, I again implored her to forgive me for all the wrong I had done her. A delicious drowsiness stole over me and closed my tired eyelids. Under the radiations of her shining eyes, which expressed infinite tenderness, I felt as if I were melting away as ice melts in the rays of the sun. Her cool lips, touching my forehead, seemed to press a seal on it, and I was plunged into the depths of ineffable bliss.
It was broad daylight when I awoke from my stupor. The rays of the sun fell on a Utopian landscape. To judge from the matutinal sounds which rose from below, it must have been above five o'clock. I had slept soundly during the whole night without dreaming or waking up. On the little table by my bedside stood the cup which had contained the elder-tea; the chair on which my wife had been sitting when I fell asleep was still in its place. I was covered with her cloak; the soft hairs of the fox skins with which it was lined tickled my chin.
My brain felt as refreshed and rested as if I had slept for the first time in ten years. I collected my thoughts, which had been rushing hither and thither in wild disorder, and with this powerful, well-drilled and disciplined army I prepared to meet those attacks of morbid remorse which frequently accompany physical weakness.
Looming large, filling my mind completely, were the two ugly blots which, under guise of a confession, I had revealed to my wife on the previous day; the two dark blots which had spoiled my life for so many years.
I resolved to re-examine them at once, to dissect those two "facts" which up to now I had allowed to pass unchallenged, for I had a vague presentiment that they were unsound.
"Let me see," I said to myself, "what have I done that I should look upon myself as a selfish coward, who has sacrificed the artistic career of his wife to his ambition? Let me see what really happened...."