'You are right,' he said with effort. 'But, my dear Greswold, though I am not absolutely guilty, as you were led for a moment to think, I am not altogether absolutely blameless. I was sensible of the fatal attraction of an unscrupulous person. I was never faithless to my wife, either in spirit or act, but you know there are miserable sensual temptations which counterfeit passion, though they do not possess it; there are unspeakable follies from which men at no age are safe. I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind, and throw the blame upon a woman; but it is certain that the old answer is often still the true one, "The woman tempted me." I am not wholly innocent; I played with fire and was surprised, like an idiot, when it burnt me. I would say as much as this to my wife (and it is the whole truth) if it were only myself who would be hurt or lowered by the telling of it; but I cannot do her such dishonour as I should seem to do by the mere relation of it. She esteems me as so much stronger and wiser than I am; she has so very noble an ideal of me; how can I pull all that down with my own hands, and say to her, "I am as weak and unstable as any one of them"?'
Greswold listened and smiled a little.
'Perhaps the Countess knows more than you think, dear sir; she is capable of immense self-control, and her feeling for you is not the ordinary selfish love of ordinary women. If I were you I should tell her everything. Speak to her as you speak to me.'
'I cannot!'
'That is for you to judge, sir,' said the old physician.
'I cannot!' repeated Sabran, with a look of infinite distress. 'I cannot tell my wife that any other woman has had influence over me, even for five seconds. I think it is S. Augustine who says that it is possible, in the endeavour to be truthful, to convey an entirely false impression. An utterly false impression would be conveyed to her if I made her suppose that any other than herself had ever been loved by me in any measure since my marriage; and how should one make such a mind as hers comprehend all the baseness and fever and folly of a man's mere caprice of the senses? It would be impossible.'
Greswold was silent.
'You do not see how difficult even such a confession as that would be,' Sabran insisted, with irritation. 'Were you in my place you would feel as I feel.'
'Perhaps,' said Greswold. 'But I believe not. I believe, sir, that you underrate the knowledge of the world and of humanity which the Countess von Szalras possesses, and that you also underrate the extent of her sympathy and the elasticity of her pardon.'
Sabran sighed restlessly.