'I went into those locked rooms; there were some verses in a drawer—some little poems. I do not know why; all at once the impression came to me; I had never dreamed of it before.'
'Men are always so blind!' she thought, as she replied aloud:
'My dear Otho, we cannot know; why let us imagine the worst? It might very well be a mere accident. The woman Nicolle has said how often she had warned her of the dangers of that ruined roof. Do not take that burden of great useless remorse upon your life. It will make you wretched.'
'Not more wretched than she was. Not more than I deserve. I was a brute to her.'
'That is nonsense; you could not be brutal to anybody if you tried. You were indifferent, but that was not your fault. She did not know how to make you otherwise. There are women who never know——'
'But she deserved so happy a fate!'
'Are there any happy fates? It is a mere expression. The happy people are the conventional terre à terre unemotional creatures who pass their lives between two bolsters, one Custom and the other Prejudice. These two bolsters save them from all shocks, and they slumber and grow fat. That poor child might have been happiest in the cloisters, because she would not have known all she missed. But in the world she would certainly have been unhappy, whether with you or any other, because she demanded impossibilities, and because she had no knowledge of human nature.'
Othmar did not hear what she said.
'I shall always feel that I have been her murderer,' he said in a hushed voice. Those poor little verses haunted him like the memory of dead children long unmourned and suddenly remembered.
She looked at him with some impatience rising in her.