“‘You love her very much, do you?’ she asked me.
“I kept obstinately silent.
“‘I understand,’ she said, ‘I understand you but too well. And Dionysia? She loves you so much she cannot keep it to herself. She stops her friends to tell them all about her marriage, and to assure them of her happiness. Oh, yes, indeed, very happy! That love which was my disgrace is her honor. I was forced to conceal it like a crime: she can display it as a virtue. Social forms are, after all, very absurd and unjust; but a fool is he who tries to defy them.’
“Tears, the very first tears I had ever seen her shed, glittered in her long silky eyelashes.
“‘And to be nothing more to you,—nothing at all! Ah, I was too cautious! Do you recollect the morning after your uncle’s death, when you, now a rich man, proposed that we should flee? I refused; I clung to my reputation. I wanted to be respected. I thought it possible to divide life into two parts,—one to be devoted to pleasure; the other, to the hypocrisy of duty. Poor fool that I was! And still I discovered long ago that you were weary of me. I knew you so well! Your heart was like an open book to me, in which I read your most secret thoughts. Then I might have retained you. I ought to have been humble, obliging, submissive. Instead of that, I tried to command.
“‘And you,’ she said after a short pause,—‘are you happy?’
“‘I cannot be completely happy as long as I know that you are unhappy. But there is no sorrow which time does not heal. You will forget’—
“‘Never!’ she cried.
“And, lowering her voice, she added,—
“‘Can I forget you? Alas! my crime is fearful; but the punishment is still more so.’