And here is she, declaring that if she is not loved, she must die—she, with her stinted soul and stunted body! Look again at the peasant hand. No beauty is there—but it can spin the wool and bake the bread:
"'What use survives the beauty?'"
Yes: Da Vinci would proclaim her fool.
Then this shall be the new formula. She will be of use; will do the daily task, forgetting the unattainable ideals. She cannot keep her husband's love, any more than she can draw the perfect hand; then she will not waste her life in sighing for either gift. She will be useful; she will gain cheer that way, since all the others fail her.
"Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand!
I have my lesson, shall understand."
This is the last hope—to be of humble use; this the last formula for survival.
IX.—ON DECK
And this has failed like the rest. She is on board the boat that carries her away from him, she has found the last formula: set him free. Well, it in its turn has been followed: she is gone. Gone—in every sense.
"There is nothing to remember in me,
Nothing I ever said with a grace,
Nothing I did that you care to see,
Nothing I was that deserves a place
In your mind, now I leave you, set you free."
No "petite fleur dans la pensée"—none, none: she grants him all her dis-grace. But will he not grant her something too—now that she is gone? Will he not grant that men have loved such women, when the women have loved them so utterly? It has been: she knows that, and the more certainly now that she has yielded finally her claim to a like miracle. His soul is locked fast; but, "love for a key" (if he could but have loved her!), what might not have happened? She might have grown the same in his eyes as he is in hers!