Success and How He Won It

by E. Werner

It is possible to wound with every look, with every breath, and this had been done. Looking down on him from the elevation of her rank and position, she had tried to crush him into that pitiful nothingness which, in her opinion, was his proper condition. Day by day she had used her weapons, all the more ruthlessly when she found he was vulnerable. She had made of his home a place of torment, of his marriage a curse, and all this that she might revenge herself on him for his father's unscrupulous treatment of her family. With fullest intent she had driven him so far that he himself had proposed a separation, because he could no longer endure life at her side. If, at last, he drew himself up and pushed aside the hand which had so racked and tortured him, whose was the fault?

She sprang up from the seat on which she had thrown herself, and began to pace up and down in terrible agitation as though trying to escape from herself. She knew well what she was trying to obtain from herself, whither her efforts were tending.

There was but one thing now which could help and save, but that was impossible, that could not be! If she were to make the sacrifice of all her pride, and the sacrifice were not accepted frankly and freely as it was offered? Might she not have been mistaken, have read those eyes amiss; they had never been unveiled for more than an instant, and then only reluctantly. If he were again to meet her with that same freezing look, asking her by what right she was doing that which would have been any other woman's simple duty? If he were again to say that he would stand or fall alone, if he were to bid her go once more? No, never! better the separation, better a whole life of misery and regret, than incur the possibility of such humiliation.

The departing sun, tipping the trees out yonder with gold, had long since set and twilight had fallen, but it brought no quiet or coolness to the heated overcrowded streets. Without, the sultry evening air was full of the same hum and stir; the stream of people still passed and repassed unceasingly, and the sound of voices and of the rattle of carriages was still borne up confusedly to the windows above.

But, through it all, another sound was heard, faint at first as a mere whisper, but growing ever nearer, ever more distinct. Had it been wafted over from those green forest-heights and made its way through the great busy thoroughfares of the city up to the young wife's ears? What it was she hardly knew; it was like the soughing of the wind in the pine branches, and, through it, echoed once more all the old forest music with its mysterious chords.

There came back to her vividly that first glimpse of spring, those bitter-sweet moments passed under the shelter of the friendly woods. The mists rose up around her again, the storm howled, and the brooks tumbled tumultuously down into the valleys below. Out of the thick grey mist one figure stood out clear and definite--the one figure which since that time had never left her sleeping or waking--and looked at her reproachfully with its great brown eyes.

He who has passed through such a crisis as this, when all the powers of the soul are concentrated on the resolution shaping itself within, may have known these rapid flashes of memory, may have seen again old scenes in their fullest details rising up before the mind's eye, without visible or external cause, but with a force irresistible.

Eugénie felt that the air around her was full of these memories, felt that, one after the other, the weapons were falling from her hands, until at last there remained only the magic influence of that hour when she had made the discovery that her hate was at an end, and that, in its place, something else was springing up, something against which she had striven, as it were, to the death, but to which she must now make surrender.

It was soon over, that last short struggle between the old demon of unbending pride, unable to forgive the repulse it had once met with, and the woman's heart telling her that she was loved, spite of all.

This time the forest voices had not spoken in vain. They gained the victory at last. The paper, which was to divide two people who had sworn to be one for ever, lay torn upon the ground, and the young wife was on her knees, raising her beautiful face, down which the hot tears were streaming, and sobbing,