"My death. Ah, to rest! to rest for ever, under the earth, in a dark grave!"
"Don't say that. People don't die of love."
"Yes that is true. There is indeed no recognised disease called love. Neither ancient nor modern doctors are acquainted with it; they have never discovered it in making their autopsies. But love is such a subtle deceiver! It is at the bottom of all mortal illnesses. It is at the bottom of those wasting declines from which people suffer for years, people who have loved too much, who have not been loved enough. It is in those maladies of the heart, where the heart bursts with emotion or dries up with despair. It is in those long anæmias which destroy the body fibre by fibre, sapping its energies. It is in that nervousness which makes people shiver with cold and burn with insupportable heat. Oh, no one dies suddenly of love. We die slowly, slowly, of troubles that have so many names, but are really all just this—that we can endure to love no longer, and that we are not loved. Who will ever know the right name of the illness from which I shall die? The doctor will write a scientific word on paper, to account for my death to you, to Laura, to Stella. But you know, you at least, that I shall die because you do not love me."
"Calm yourself, Anna."
"I am calm. I have no longer the shadow of a hope. But I am calm, believe me. I have to tell you these things because they well up from my soul of their own accord. I am an absolutely desperate woman, but I am calm, I shall always be calm. Don't answer me. Everything that you can say I have already said to myself. All is ended. Why should I not be calm?"
"But, if you no longer hope for anything, then you have hoped for something. For what?" he asked, with a certain curiosity.
"Oh, heavens!" she cried. "That you should ask me that!"
"Tell me, Anna. You see that I ask it with sympathy, with lively sympathy."
"But you must have forgotten what love is like, if you ask me to tell you what its hopes are," she exclaimed. "One hopes for everything when one loves. From the moment when I first trembled at the sound of your voice, from the moment when first the touch of your hand on mine thrilled me with delight, from the moment when first the words you spoke, whether they were hard or kind, scornful or friendly, seemed to engrave themselves upon my spirit, from the moment when I first realised that I was yours—yours for life, from that moment I have hoped that you might love me. From that moment it has been my dream that you might love me, with a love equal to my own, with a self-surrender equal to my own, with an absolute concentration of all your heart and soul, as I love you. That has been the sublime hope that my love has cherished."
"It was an illusion," he said softly, looking off upon the broad shining sea, bathed in the moonlight.