“How can you tell?” said Marcel, eagerly. “Do you think I am indifferent because, obeying you too well, I have addressed to you nothing but simple expressions of cold courtesy? Do not judge my feelings by my words; they are very different from one another.”
“You have only known me for a week.”
“Is a longer time needed to love for ever?”
“For ever! What an engagement to make! And so quickly decided on!”
“And so easy to keep when one first sees and afterwards comes to know you!”
“And which can have no result, as I must soon leave, and go away far from—”
“What need is there for you to follow out plans formed during the early days of sadness and solitude? Is it wise to decide for a whole lifetime in a single moment at your age, and with such a store of future compensations to draw upon? At the age of twenty-four to think that everything is lost, because destiny has separated you from a husband old enough to have been your father? Your life has only just begun, at the very time you think it is all over.”
“Yes, my brother has often said the same thing to me. That is the usual way of looking at things. New tenderness to replace a dying affection. But then, how wretched to lend one’s self to such social arrangements, and undergo such an unexpected fate! And yet a heart cannot be swept out like a room for new tenants. The memories of the one who occupied it cannot be so speedily effaced; they remain. And is it not a kind of profanation for a delicate soul to allow itself to cherish a new affection, when it imagined the light had vanished for ever?”
“I will reply in your own words: ‘For ever! What an engagement to make! And so lightly decided on!’ Can you be sure of keeping it? Let the world wag along. Your decision will not alter anything. There is nothing definite in this world, not even the sincerest grief.”
She stood there silent for some time with downcast eyes. Her companion admired the graceful curves of her supple form, and the youthful grace that appeared on the beautiful countenance. She seemed scarcely twenty years of age. Her cheeks had all the appearance of a tempting and savoury fruit, Finally she continued, with a sigh—