“Poor girl!”
“Yes; you—you are richer than I, you have your children and you have your husband,” answered Mathilde with a sad smile, whilst her eyes filled with tears; “and though you have your troubles and vexations, you have more—more than I. Let that be your comfort when you have a fit of melancholy. Just think of me, think that I could yet envy you, if—if everything were not dead within me, everything except that one thing alone.”
“Mathilde! Oh, how can you speak like that? it pains me!”
“It should not do so, for me it pains no longer. ’Tis only just a faint memory of what has been, you know; nothing more. But still, ’tis better to be silent about it; the raking up of these memories does me no good, but hurts me, though I am almost a mummy.”
“Oh, Mathilde, how is it possible that you can always keep it [[155]]pent up within you? I—I could not do so; I should have to give it vent, that which made me so——”
“No, no, Jeanne; oh, truly no, never more! Do not speak any more about it, or—I—I shall feel myself brought back to life again. No, don’t; never again—I beg of you.”
She leaned back against the seat, and tears dropped from her lashes, whilst with her waxen pallor, and in her sombre black dress, she seemed a picture of an infinite, unspeakable sorrow. She would not be brought back to life, she wanted to be dead!
Jeanne did not want to get home too late, so that she might be there before the children and Frans. So they turned back.
“And now I dare say I have made you sad, when I wanted to refresh you with a pleasant walk?” asked Mathilde smiling. “Yes; that comes of all that philosophy; forgive me, do!”
Jeanne could find nothing to say, and shook her head smilingly, to signify that she was really not sad. And in her inmost soul she had to acknowledge deeply—though Mathilde’s silent despair had at first grieved her—now that she herself had once more assumed her ordinary semblance of resignation, that pity for her friend became fused into a feeling of peace and rest, as far as her own small troubles were concerned. By the side of that one great ever-reviving sorrow the latter seemed to her small and insignificant, the easily-borne troubles of life, whilst had she been doomed to bear Mathilde’s sorrows, she would have been crushed beneath them. She felt a remorse that she was ungrateful for all the good that was bestowed on her, and which still was hers—a remorse that sometimes she dared to feel herself wretched at her fate, and yet she had been spared so much sorrow! Frans, he might have his faults, he might be hasty and disagreeable when he was ill; still he loved her, a and after a moment’s reflection, he was always ready to own himself in the wrong; still he prized her. And in that sweet thought, which made her feel proudly contented, she could no longer feel sad in sympathy, though she considered herself an egotist on account of it; but oh! it was so rarely that she felt such a delicious sweetness pervade her little soul; was it wrong then for a brief moment to feel an egotist’s pleasure?