She was humbled in her own eyes. The sentimentalists had conquered throughout, they had been greater than she!
Poor Mignon, with her heart breaking in a love which she dared not avow, which no one wanted!
A few kind words might have saved her; might have healed the bruised child's heart and made it strong for the burden of life; and she had not spoken those words.
If she had read this story in a book of poems, if she had seen it unfolded on the scene of a pastoral as of an opera, it would have touched her; but as it had been in real life she had not cared; because the living, throbbing, aching nerves had been alive before her she had not cared; she had turned away, and had left them to bleed to death as they would—as they might.
A sense of guilt was upon her. She felt as though she had killed some humble, wounded animal which had crept to her feet for safety. She had always declared that genius was sacred to her; and now she had dealt with it as a mere common noxious thing, and driven it away from her to perish.
'And we are such wretched shallow egotists,' she thought. 'I grieve for her now, and I know that she has been greater than I shall ever be, and I know that we have killed her—he and I and the world which had no place for her; and yet how often shall I remember her, how often shall I be gentler to others for her sake?—once or twice, whilst the memory of her is warm perhaps—no more; one has no time.'
Rosselin would remember every hour of all such few days as might remain to him on earth; but no one else.
'Oh, foolish child,' she thought, 'to die for that! Why not have lived, and reigned over the souls of men, and put a curb on the slavering mouth of the fawning world! It is never worth an hour of sacrifice.'
Yet all overwrought, unwise, useless, as such sacrifice was, it had a nobility in it which awed her, and a generosity which made her own egotism seem poor and pale beside it.
'Make him happier.'