“She is thinking things out.”
“Good God!” groaned Felix. “Our Jane—our great haughty creature—she wasn’t meant to think. She was meant to be looked at—she ought never to have had an idea in her head. What a waste—what a wicked waste.”
Clémentine on a footstool by the fire nursed her knees. “She did really think we were immoral. We took life as a joke. She couldn’t understand. She believed in the Bible—all the part about being wicked. She didn’t know it, but her creed was the ten commandments. She is a victim of the ten commandments.”
Ludovic shook his head. “She was right,” he said, “all her life she wanted to do right—now she has done it. She has gone back to her people. She should never have come here. There was nothing for her here, but ourselves.”
“And were we nothing?” cried Clémentine, “didn’t we love her well? Didn’t we understand?”
“No, we didn’t understand. And we didn’t count. We didn’t count for her.”
Ah, Jane, Jane, it was true. We didn’t count. In all your story, you scarcely alluded to us. We were just your friends who loved you, and we didn’t count. If only you could know what we know about yourself; if only you knew how we cared for you beyond all the differences of conduct; if only you could have realized that life is not a thing to fear, that it is a little trivial thing, or again, just a thing like food, an element like air, to be eaten, or breathed or enjoyed. But you thought it a mysterious gift, a terrible responsibility, a high and serious obligation, with a claim on your soul. You thought it a thing you could sin against. You confounded life with God.
This little street is so quiet tonight, so quiet and small. It shuts me in. It shuts me comfortably in, but beyond it there is a great distance—a great land—a great sea—a high and terrible sky.
THE END