"What is the use of dissimulating? Haven't you as good as confessed?" he answered.
Whereupon she threw herself back on the sofa-cushion and began to weep again silently, as if she feared the intense sorrow of her soul being brought to light. She tried to speak, but could only articulate a confused murmur. It was not only that she had suffered, but, worst of all, she was ashamed of her suffering.
And then at last she found words sufficiently humble in which to begin her tale.
"It would sound ridiculous to say so, Leo, and you may scoff at me as much as you like, but you are right. I love him, and I have always loved him. That has been my fate, and God meant me for him---me, and me alone. For I understood his character as no one else in the world could do, not even you, Leo, with all your great friendship. If I had become his wife, I would have kissed his feet and hands. I would have watched over his poor weakly body with the tenderest care, which now languishes because no one troubles about it. But she came--I won't abuse her; she has had her punishment--and for her sake he forgot me. He ran after her in the same way as you did. And, out of defiance, I took the first man who asked me.
"When I came back here as a widow, I wondered if he would care for me then; but she had become a widow too, thanks to you, and I was embittered and wretched, and daren't hope for happiness any more. She, on the contrary, had added attractiveness and fascinations in her mourning, and seemed to say, 'Come, take me and comfort me; here I am.' I saw how he was drawn to her more and more on the pretext of compassionating her loneliness, and I looked on, paralysed with agony that I might lose him a second time. But instead of making a fight for him, I kept out of his way. And so I lost him--lost him."
She stopped, smiling faintly before her. He writhed in his anger against the fate which seemed to be crushing them both beneath its relentless heel, and felt as if he must resist it with his last strength.
His sister went on. "Then came the day when I learnt your secret, and had her in my power. But so ungovernable had my hate and jealousy become that I said to myself, if he thought so lowly of me that he could prefer that degraded creature, I would let him marry her and rue the day, as you and I should rue it. There, now you know all. I have confessed the horrible sin I committed, which I repent bitterly to this hour, and shall repent so long as my poor head holds out. But it is, oh, so tired, my head; and my knees are tired too. It can't last much longer, dear Leo."
She laid her open palms upon her temples and sank back in the corner of the sofa.
"What plans have you for the future, Johanna?" he asked.
"I? None I shall go into a lunatic asylum."