So now they have done it! They have touched my paradise with their dirty fingers. O Constance! how is it to be borne? My one comfort is that Gabriel knows nobody, hears nothing; if such talk were to reach his ears, I should kill myself.
Yet perhaps it is just as well that this blow has come to me. It has given me the shock I needed. I have made up my mind to keep away from Gabriel as long as I can; it is best so. Christmas charities, etc., will serve as a sufficient excuse.
Constance, I am going to tell you all; I trust so to your understanding and your love. It seems strange, perhaps, to speak as I am about to speak; I shall burst if I don’t. It is this: I love him, I love him horribly, horribly; I cannot bear it. Why must one do this? Why couldn’t it last, our white friendship? On his side it might; he loves me, I know, but only as I loved him at first. He loves me very much. I am grown in a way indispensable to him, but his love makes him content; it will not kill him. Mine is grown unbearable.
Perhaps I should have told you this before, yet I have not known it very long. I knew some time ago that all my joy is in him; he has been for many weeks the goal of my eyes, the centre of my thought; the time I spent away from him was dead time; when I was with him I was flooded in peace. But all this was joy, not pain. That came later; the time I spent away from him was no longer dead, it was living longing.
One day, about a week ago, I had forgotten him (I forget how I managed that!), but suddenly the thought of him returned to me. I felt a sudden sharp pain at my heart, a sort of aching that tingled through me to my very finger-tips. I knew then how it was with me.
Next day I did not go to meet him in the wood as I had promised; I went straight to the cottage; I feared myself. When he returned at tea-time, he came up to me and took my hand with more friendship than of wont.
“Oh, Emilia!” he cried, “why have you failed me? I have been so anxious; I feared you were ill.”
He said this as a brother might have said it; he looked me full in the face as serenely as the stars at night. I looked back at him; his calm fell upon me, and I laughed at myself for my fears. I got better after that, yet not well; I was never at ease. To-day we were together very long; I was perfectly happy; we had spoken of beautiful things, calmly, in great peace. But at parting he forgot to let my hand go; he held it so long that I had time to feel his, and my blood bounded through me in great waves. I still think he must have felt it; if he did, I can never look at him again.
I hate myself for loving him so; I hate myself that I suffer through him; the fault seems his, being entirely mine.
And now I wish that I had never seen him, that all these days of joy were wiped out of my life; for the joy is turned to misery and pain, and for this there can be no cure. If he grew to love me as I do him, it would be unearthly; such happiness is not for this world. I think that if he loved me, one of us would surely die. This is the world, O Constance! Bursts of beauty, bursts of bliss, but none to live untouched, none to endure.