'Then she must be shut up in some convent.'
'Or dead.'
'Oh no, my dear, she had too much life in her to die. Besides, her grandfather would have made her death known. I am sure she will live and have a history, probably such a history as Madame Tallien's or as Madame Favart's. She carries it in her countenance.'
'Five fathoms of blue water were perhaps the better fate,' said Othmar.
'You are very poetic,' said his wife with her unkindest smile. 'I always thought you had a touch of genius yourself, only it never took speech or shape. You are a Dante born dumb.'
'Then you should pity me indeed,' said Othmar, with irritation.
He kept the sketch hanging in the room which he most often used at his house in Paris. It served to retain in his memory that night upon the sea when he had seen the figure of Damaris disappear in the moonlight, amidst the silver of the olive-trees, while the fragrance of the orange-scented air and the breath of the sweet-smelling narcissus were wafted to him from the island pastures out over the starlit waters.
'You will end in falling in love with that picture,' said his wife to him with much amusement. He was angered at the suggestion. His regret for Damaris was wholly impersonal.
'We did her a cruel kindness,' he thought sometimes when he glanced at it. 'Wherever she be, and whatever she live to become, she will always carry a thorn in her heart, because she will always have the sentiment that she might have been something which she is not. It is the saddest idea that can pursue anyone through life. Perhaps she will marry the boat-builder and have a dozen children, but that will not prevent her sometimes, when she sees a fine sunset, or sits in the moonlight on the shore waiting for the sloop to come in, from being haunted by the thought that if things had gone otherwise she might have been in the great world. And then, just for that passing moment, while the ghost of that "might have been" is with her, she will hate the man who comes home in the sloop, and will not even care for the children who are shouting on the beach.'