In this they were one, but in their manner of bearing their distress they were widely different. Sti Högh grieved ceaselessly in impotent misery, dulled by his very pain against the sharpest stings of that pain, despairing like a captured animal that paces back and forth, back and forth, in its narrow cage. Marie was more like a wild creature escaped from captivity, fleeing madly, without rest or pause, driven on and ever on by frantic fear of the chain that drags clanking in its track.
She wanted to forget, but forgetfulness is like the heather: it grows of its own free will, and not all the care and labor in the world can add an inch to its height. She poured out gold from overflowing hands and purchased luxury. She caught at every cup of pleasure that wealth could buy or wit and beauty and rank could procure, but all in vain. There was no end to her wretchedness, and nothing, nothing could take it from her. If the mere parting from Sti Högh could have eased her pain or even shifted the burden, she would have left him long ago, but no, it was all the same, no spark of hope anywhere. As well be together as apart, since there was no relief either way.
Yet the parting came, and it was Sti Högh who proposed it. They had not seen each other for several days, when Sti came into the drawing-room of the magnificent apartment they had rented from Isabel Gilles, the landlady of La Croix de Fer. Marie was sitting there, in tears. Sti shook his head drearily and took a chair at the other end of the room. It was hard to see her weep and to know that every word of comfort from his lips, every sympathetic sigh or compassionate look, merely added bitterness to her grief and made her tears flow faster.
He went up to her.
“Marie,” he said in a low, husky voice, “let us have one more talk and then part.”
“What is the good of that?”
“Nay, Marie, there are yet happy days awaiting you, even now they are coming thick and fast.”
“Ay, days of mourning and nights of weeping in an endless, unbreakable chain.”
“Marie, Marie, have a care what you say, for I understand the meaning of your words as you never think to have me, and they wound me cruelly.”
“I reck but little of wounds that are stung with words for daggers. It was never in my mind to spare you them.”