"It sounds mad, hein? But it once happened—on just such a night as this, when my mind was just as blank. Really! Out of the silence a woman told me a beautiful story. Of course, I never used it, nor do I know if she made use of it herself; but I have never forgotten. For years I could not hear a telephone bell without trembling. Even now, when I am working late, I find myself hoping for her voice."
"The story was so wonderful as that?"
He threw a glance into the study, as if to assure himself that his wife had not entered it from the hall.
"Can you believe that a man may learn to love—tenderly and truly love —a woman he has never met?" he asked me.
"I don't think I understand you."
"There has been only one woman in my life who was all in all to me," he said—"and I never saw her."
How was I to answer? I looked at him.
"After all, what is there incredible in it?" he demanded. "Do we give our love to a face, or to a temperament? I swear to you that I could not have known that woman's temperament more intimately if we had made our confidences in each other's arms. I knew everything of her, except the trifles which a stranger learns in the moment of being presented— her height, her complexion, her name, whether she was married or single. No, those things I never knew. But her tastes, her sympathies, her soul, these, the secret truths of the woman, were as familiar to me as to herself."
He hesitated.
"I am in a difficulty. If I seem to disparage my wife, I shall be a cad; if I let you think we have been as happy together as people imagine, you will not understand the importance of what I am going to tell you. I will say this: before our honeymoon was over, I bored her fearfully. While we were engaged, I had talked to her of my illusions about herself; when we were married, I talked to her of my convictions about my art. The change appalled her. She was chilled, crushed, dumfounded. I looked to her to share my interests. For response, she yawned—and wept.