He paused for a moment, and gave her a hasty glance. But she did not stir, so breathlessly was she listening to him, her eyes fixed on the head of the dog, who lay quietly sleeping at her side.
"I will spare you any account of the further course of my love affair," he continued. "It is enough that in eight days I gained my case by ardor and flattery: and Lucie was my betrothed.
"The strange manner in which she bore herself in this position ought to have warned me. To my first passionate wooing she had opposed a prudishness and a maidenly reserve such as I had not expected to find in an actress, especially as she let me see plainly enough that she felt anything but indifferent toward me, and that the homage of an artist whose reputation was then in the ascendant was exceptionally flattering to her. But no sooner did I, somewhat taken aback by this severe maidenly reserve, make her a proposal that aimed at nothing less than our marriage and her retirement from the stage, than her tone changed. She began to treat the subject with greater lightness, to utter platitudes against marriages among artists, and in praise of the happiness of liberty; to tease me with moods, and to attract me again by all kinds of pretty coaxing; so that my passionate obstinacy was urged higher and higher, until at last I forced her, half against her will, to fix the wedding-day.
"Of course this excited the greatest amazement among my former companions, who could scarcely believe their ears. To those with whom I was most intimate I expatiated on the matter as an exceedingly practical undertaking, as a truly sensible marriage. I should never again find a being who was thus equally removed from Philistinism and evil courses. Besides, one cannot go on sowing wild oats forever; and it seemed to me that now, when my prospects had begun to seem quite favorable on account of a number of orders I had received, was the most suitable time to settle to a steadier life. This is what I said to my most intimate friends. I said nothing to the others. One of them, our Falstaff, who was the one most concerned at my loss, took me aside one day and asked whether I was really in earnest about this foolish affair. Upon my replying that I was sufficiently in earnest to forbid any contemptuous criticism upon my conduct, even from a good friend, he shrugged his shoulders and excused himself: he had not had the slightest intention of offending me, but he merely wished to call my attention to the fact that this freak of mine might cost me too dearly. Then, when I pressed him further, he remarked that 'in his opinion there were such things as artificial violets, and that the most genuine thing about this creature was her acting, which, unfortunately, she kept up in real life as well as on the stage.' And then followed a short sketch of her adventurous career, which this well-meaning man had collected, not without considerable trouble, from numberless inquiries at the theatres where she had appeared.
"Of course I expressed my appreciation of his kindness in the plainest possible words, broke with him once and for all, and ran off to my betrothed, to whom I excitedly related the whole chronicle of what I had heard about her way of life. The idea had never even entered my head that she would answer me in any other way than with a burst of burning indignation, and I had already been considering what kind words I should make use of in order to soothe her. But she heard me through without emotion, indeed without even blushing, so that for a moment I was fool enough to say to myself, 'I really believe she is so innocent that she doesn't even understand what I have been telling her.' But when I ceased speaking, she looked me full in the face, quite unabashed and with her most angelic expression, and said: 'This is all a lie, except in one particular. I committed a single wrong when I was a mere child, and that was the reason why I refused to become your wife. Do now as you like; you know what you take when you take me.'
"This confession, which she made with her irresistible melodramatic voice, blinded me completely; and I was more convinced than ever that all the rest of the talk about her deceitfulness and coquetry, and her heartless flirting with foolish young admirers, was a lie. 'No,' I cried, folding her in my arms, 'you shall not find yourself disappointed in me, you shall not find a narrow-minded Philistine, when you thought you were giving yourself up to a free artist's soul. What lies behind you shall cast no shadow over our future. If it is true that you love me, why then--' and here I quoted, slightly changing it to suit the occasion, a verse of poetry that I had read but a short time before and had thought very profound. 'Was I a saint before I asked your hand? And yet I was master of my fate, and knew what I did. No, let there be day before us and behind us night, that none may look upon us! Only promise me that in the future all your thoughts shall belong to me alone.'
"She sobbed violently in my arms, and made me the fairest promises. I almost believe that at that moment she did indeed mean what she said, for there was a sound spot in her that had not yet been touched by the worm--a longing for what was pure and good. If this had not been the case, how would it have been possible for me to have continued in my blindness longer than the few weeks of the honey-moon? But she herself seemed so happy in those first months, though we lived quite by ourselves--for I had broken with my old cronies, and had no particular desire to form new acquaintances, whom I could only have found among the Philistine class that I so heartily despised. Then, too, she grew more charming with each day. Once in a while, however, I caught her poring over her prompt-books; and then I told her bluntly, for I could see that her eyes were red with weeping, that she longed to be back behind the foot-lights again, that she missed the applause and grieved because she could not any longer turn the heads of the whole parquet. 'What can you be thinking of!' she laughed. 'In my condition! Why, I should feel like sinking through the deepest trap-door, I should be so ashamed!' In this way she would drive away my suspicions; and when at length her child was born, I really thought she was so taken up with household joys and cares that she cared for nothing else.
"It is true she was not such a foolish mother as to think her child an angel of beauty. It was a rather plain, unattractive-looking little thing--'the father over again,' remarked the women, very justly. But she played the rôle of mother with considerable talent; and not until a long time later, when she was sent to the sea-shore to recuperate, did it occur to me that she parted without any particular grief from the laughing and cooing little creature that clung so tightly to her. I staid at home and let her go over to Heligoland by herself, in the charge of an elderly friend of hers--an actress, but a woman bearing an irreproachable name. I happened to have a few orders that it was necessary to execute just as soon as possible--among others two busts of a rich wharfinger and his wife--and as our household, small as it was, made pretty heavy drains upon my purse, I felt that I ought not to let these chances slip through my fingers. It was our first separation, and I found it hard enough to bear. But, as I had to work hard and also to fill a mother's place toward the child, the first two weeks passed pretty quickly.
"But after that the little one began to give me a great deal of anxiety. Teething set in, there were bad days and worse nights, and the letters I received from my wife--in which she said she was doing admirably and had grown quite young again--did not tend to raise my spirits especially, for it appeared as if nothing were wanting to her happiness, not even her husband and child.
"Heretofore I had had neither disposition nor occasion for jealousy. Suddenly I was to learn what an abyss can be uncovered in a man's soul, into which everything sinks that he has before believed firm and true.