"He could not help it," she said; "and when I was calm enough to reason I knew he was not to blame for my imagination. It was all over in a few months, and he would have been quite content to bear what followed philosophically. When the worst came to the worst, he told me that he had known it could not last, because such things never did; but that he had also known that, even after the inevitable termination, I should always please him and display good taste. He had lived through so much, and I had known so little. I only spoke openly to him once,—one awful day, and after that I scarcely know what happened to me for months. I asked him to let me go away alone, and I went to the sea-side. Since then the sound of the sea has been a terror to me, and yet there are times when I long to hear it. I used to tell myself that, on one of those days when I sat on the sand and looked at the sea, I died, and that I have never really lived since. Something happened to me—I don't know what. It was one brilliant morning, when the sun beat on the blue water and the white sand, and everything was a dazzling glare. I sat on the beach for hours without moving, and when I got up and walked away I remember hearing myself saying, 'I have left you behind,—I have left you behind,—I shall never see you again.' I was ill for several days afterward, and when I recovered I seemed to have become a new creature. When my husband came I was able to meet him so calmly that I think it was even a kind of shock to him."
"And that was the end?" said Bertha.
"Yes, that was the end—for me."
"And for him?"
"Once or twice afterward it interested him to try experiments with me, and when they failed he was not pleased."
"Were you never afraid," said Bertha, "that they would not fail?"
"No. There is nothing so final as the ending of such a feeling. There is nothing to come after it, because it has taken everything with it,—passion, bitterness, sorrow,—even regret. I never wished that it might return after the day I spoke of. I have thought if, by stretching forth my hand, I could have brought it all back just as it was at first, I should not have wished to do it. It had been too much."
"It is a false thing," said Bertha,—"a false thing, and there must always be some such end to it."
Agnes Sylvestre was silent again, and because of her silence Bertha repeated her words with feverish eagerness.