She drew herself up at these words; her eyes glistened with moisture, her features assumed an expression of anxious emotion, and her gestures were hasty and ungraceful.
"Well?" she queried. "Are you not yet satisfied? Have I something still that your hate begrudges me, that you would like to tear from me? Take it--take all I have--take even my miserable life, that you have spared me until now, for I see what you are aiming at when you say you want to put an end to this. Yes, an end to my woes, to my disappointed hopes, to my happiness and my honor--an end to this wretched creature, that wanders through the world like a leaf torn from a tree, finding rest nowhere--nowhere until it sinks into the mud and rots there."
She threw herself on the sofa, and burst into a flood of tears.
He knew these tears. He knew that she possessed the art of moving herself in order to move others. But still he felt a deep pity for this unhappy nature, which could not even in its truest grief weep truly.
"Lucie," he said--it was the first time he had addressed her by her name--"you are quite right, you are unhappy and I am partly to blame for it. I ought to have been a wiser man, and never to have thought of making you my wife. We are of different blood; you are in your element when you are pretending to be something you are not. I--but why talk about it? We know it all--we ought to have known it then; it would have spared us much bitterness. And now, Lucie, you see I am not unjust; I share the blame between us, just as I have borne my good half of the misfortune. But shall it go on this way and make both of us wretched all our lives? I have written all this to you. Why didn't you read my letters better? We should now understand one another, and should be able to conclude what still remains to be done in a more friendly spirit."
"Your letters?" she said, suddenly drawing herself up and drying her tears. "I read them only too well. I know that in and between the lines there was but one thought: 'I will be free!--free at any price!' I knew, too, who it was who dictated this thought to you; and now, since I have made the personal acquaintance of this incomparable woman--no, without sarcasm, which would be but childish defiance for one in my situation--I understand perfectly that you would be willing to do anything in order that you might throw yourself into such chains. But to suppose that I, with my share of our common misfortune, as you call it, will voluntarily step back and look on while you find happiness according to your heart's desire--oh! you are excellent egotists, you men!--but you should not be so naïve as to think it a crime if we, too, sometimes think a little about ourselves!"
His old aversion arose again as he listened to this well-calculated, passionate speech. But he forced himself to be quiet.
"I have never tried to conceal from you," said he, "that I am now more desirous than ever before for an absolute separation, because I wish to enter into a new marriage. If you thought it was for your interest to hinder this, if you wished to prevent me from ever again becoming a happy man, then this would be comprehensible on your part, although it would betray but little pride. But you ought to know me better. You ought to know that I am terribly in earnest when I say my submission to the fate that binds us together is at an end. I can--I shall never consent to let the malicious defiance of a woman cheat myself and her whom I love of our happiness in life. I am determined to do anything which can set me free. Do you hear it? To do anything. And for that reason I say to you: name your price! I know very well that your desire to feel that I am in your power, and the triumph of seeing me drag a piece of the chain after me is dear to you. But even dearer things have their price. Name yours; I will buy off your hate and your malice, though to do it I had to work like a day-laborer from morning until late into the night."
"I don't imagine that will be necessary. Your sweetheart is rich, I hear. But you are mistaken. I am not covetous. Give me the child, and I will never have known the father."
"Woman!" he cried, his whole being lashed into fury by the trick which he immediately detected--"You are--"