"Two questions now rend my heart; one is, Has the violence of love taken from me life, study, and the power of abstract thought? The other is, Must a child of humanity, because destiny has once decided for him, become a lifelong victim to this determination? And these two questions resolve themselves into one, just as those snaky heads form one knot under the chin of the Medusa."
"Go on!" urged Bella.
"Well, then, there was one hour when I would like to have said to the beautiful wife sitting before me, 'I love thee!' and I would have embraced and kissed her, but then,"—Eric pressed his hand upon his heart, and gnashed his teeth,—"but that hour over, I should have put a bullet through my brain!"
Bella let her eyes fall, and Eric went on: "One hour, and then my peace was gone; I had nothing left. I could not sleep. I could not think. This could not last. I lost myself, and what did I gain? I saw all that this love devastated, and could it be love? No. Could I take it lightly like others, it would be light. But why is this the only thing to be made light of? Why is not the ideal of life also to be made light of, and why is not all feeling only a plausible lie?"
In a hoarse voice he added:—
"But I do not believe that love has the right to lay everything in ruins; but then perhaps it may be said, it is not real love. Pluck up heart, look at the world for yourself, see how pleasantly, respectably, and shrewdly it lies, the women tricked out with artificial beauty, and the men with superficial knowledge. Do you see the abyss on whose brink I stood? And here I said to myself. We are placed in the world in order to live, and knowledge and culture have been given us that we may get from them life and not death. And how could I look a noble man in the face, how could I look up to the sun in heaven, how was I to educate a human being, to stand erect in the world, to abhor crime, to discern the holy; how was I to take the word mother upon my lips, with the consciousness that I was myself the vilest of all, and that there was no moment in which I, and another also, must not tremble, and be filled with cowardly fear and despair."
Eric paused and placed his hand on his forehead; his voice choked, tears stood in his eyes.
"Go on!" cried Bella, "I am listening."
"It is well. This once do I speak thus to you, and only this once. You have courage to hear the truth. Our relation is not love, must not be love; for love cannot thrive on murder, hypocrisy, and treachery. I clasp your hand—no, I clasp it not, for I know I could not let it go, if I did. Here I stand—I speak to you, you listen to me—I speak to you, as if I were miles away, as if I were dead; there must be distance, there must be death, before there is any life."
"What do you mean?" interposed Bella.