"Very well; your marriage was interpreted with about as much truth. As nothing was more evident than the irreproachableness of your conduct, slander arranged for you a mysterious subterranean life. I assure you it is astonishing to listen to. They even told of disguises and a little far away house in the suburbs."
"If I was not so sad, I would smile with you, my friend, at all these wicked falsehoods, but I have got to a period in my souvenirs when all is so cruel, so distressing," and she held out her hand to me, "that I have hardly courage enough to speak of it. After three years of complete and passionate happiness,—after—"
Marguerite could say no more, she burst into tears, and it was some moments before she continued.
"Yes, yes, I know," said I to her as I knelt before her, "I know how admirable and devoted you were all that dreadful time. Now that I have looked into your soul, now that I know who it was that filled it, and fills it still with his souvenir, I understand how agonising such an eternal separation must be to you."
After a few moments of silence Marguerite began again: "Thanks, thanks, for understanding me thus. Mon Dieu! Since that dreadful moment this is the first time that my grief is not unbearable, my tears not bitter, for I can relieve my heart by speaking of my sorrows. I can tell how much I loved and how much I have suffered. Alas! while in the midst of so much felicity I needed no friend to talk about it, but since,—oh, since all this affliction has come to me I have been so lonely! If you only knew what a life I have led! Obliged to hide my grief, my sad regrets, as I used to hide my delights! To whom could I tell them? Who was there to console me? The world sometimes has pity for a guilty love, but for a sacred sorrow like mine it has nothing but abuse, for it is either ridiculous or a lie. Weep thus for one's husband! Regret him so bitterly! Live only in the remembrance of one who was so dear! Who ever would believe that? And then why should I speak of it? And to whom? My relations were quite too worldly to understand my grief; and then I had been so selfish in my happy days that I had never tried to make friends. He—he alone was all I cared for. To whom would I have cared to tell how happy I was? To him, and to him alone! Besides, with all the carelessness of boundless felicity, I never even thought that misfortune could come near me."
"Alas, poor friend, how miserable you must have been! To suffer alone is so frightful!"
"Yes, yes, I have suffered, believe me. Sometimes, through a timidity of which I am ashamed, I was afraid of being alone. In the darkness and silence my grief would almost overpower me. It grew upon me that at times I was terrified, and then I took refuge in society. I detested it, but I needed its noise and excitement to take my mind off thoughts that were strained to such a point that I feared for my reason. When this strain was over and I was calm once more, I railed at the vain joys of the world for having caused me to forget my grief. I lamented my cowardice, and thus my days passed in constant moods of contradiction. This is not all. I knew that my sorrows were the cause of slanderous tales, and yet I neither would nor could justify myself. Oh, if you only knew how cruel it is to have nothing but the truth as a defence,—the truth which, in your eyes, is so sacred, so venerated, that it would seem a profanation to tell it to the incredulous and careless."
Marguerite again wept silently. She continued, after a pause: "Now you can understand my disdain for every one and everything. Soured by my trouble, I became irritable and capricious, and as no one understood the cause, I was called fantastic. The people that surrounded me seemed vulgar when compared to the one whose souvenir shall always be sacred; and so they said I was scornful or deceitful. The useless coquetry that I was reproached with, and to which they assigned the worst motives, was but another tribute to his memory. I wore these beautiful clothes because he loved to see me wear them. All these beautiful surroundings, these flowers, this half-light in which he used to veil my features, alas! they were all so many precious souvenirs. Finally, those scientific smatterings that people chose to call pretentious were only sad reflections of past days, for, being a savant himself, he loved to talk to me of his various attainments.
"What more can I say, my friend? Living alone, the manner of my living seems too ostentatious, and so I am called haughty and vain, and yet it is because this house was his home that I keep it up as he did. Now you know the secret of my life. Before I met you I cared very little whether the world approved of me or not. I was called a vain, extravagant flirt. What did it matter? I cared nothing for their odious tales; they were perfectly uninteresting to me; but since I have learned to appreciate all your good qualities, and have seen how easily you were influenced by the world's ill-natured opinion of me, I set such price on your esteem, your affection, that I could not bear to have you judge me as others do. And besides, you have often generously undertaken to defend me, and I wished to prove to you that your natural instincts were noble and just. And now I have still a painful confession to make to you."
"Marguerite, I implore you—"