Under the cynicism of the analytical novelist’s sacrifice, renunciation, the conquering strife of passion over duty, noble failure, the greatly borne martyrdom of humanity, are the things that have ever appealed to me. I have always desired to love and be loved in the cleansing fire of pain rather than in the facile yielding to the senses. So that there really was no logical reason why I should whimper and mope because Brases had not dropped into my arms by some magnetic influence. And even if she chose elsewhere! So long as her choice was justified by happiness, what need had I to complain? I murmured Sully Prudhomme’s lines, of a more subtle beauty of feeling than Browning’s, and Trueberry cocked a wistful brow.
‘Repeat them louder, they sound so beautiful,’ he urged, and I repeated them.
‘“Car l’aile de sa fantaisie,
N’a fait, hélas, que m’effleurer,”’
he cried, with water in his eyes. ‘Could you picture yourself, Gontran, saying that of the woman you loved to the man who had gained her!’
‘I hope so,’ I replied, smiling. ‘The bitter would be so sweet. And then the magnificent retort upon broken hopes:
“Méchante enfant qui m’abandonnes,
Vois le chagrin que tu me donnes?
Je ne puis rien pour ton bonheur.”’
I spoke lightly, like the cynical boulevardier, while inwardly I was bleeding. But Trueberry, bereft, by weakness and love, of all power of scrutiny or penetration, saw nothing of my suffering. He was in the absorbing paradise of a new-born claim, in the unconscious premonition of response, and smiled vaguely at me, dear fellow, as if a strong but agreeable opiate had drugged him.