"You've had a child and lost it," he said after a pause. "How much you must have suffered!" She suddenly stopped and let his arm fall.
"More than any human being suspects!" she said with great emphasis, laying a stress upon every syllable. "Let's say nothing about it. And yet, why may I not speak of it to you, the only person I know who can even understand what that anguish was, and also the only one who will not be cruel enough to say: 'it served you right,' and you would have more reason to say so than any other human being!"
She cast a backward glance toward the carriage, which was moving slowly along about twenty paces behind them.
"Please shut the umbrella," she said in a low tone. "I'm so warm, the damp air does me good. Dear friend, how often I've wished to be able to talk with you so. I thought everything would then be easier. Although in my hardest trials I should not have been able to show myself, even to you, exactly as I was. I did not like to confess the truth to myself; I dreaded to look in the glass, as if it were written on my brow and I must die of shame if I read it. Now--when everything is past--even the guilt, which I could not help--I only think of it all as a great misfortune, the greatest that can befal a woman. You said I must have suffered deeply when the child died. What will you think of me, when I tell you--that I suffered as long as it lived, and ceased to suffer when I lost it!
"It sounds horrible, does it not? And yet it is literally true. You'll think me an unnatural mother, and you're right. But can I help it, that I was born with this unnatural disposition, that everything which makes others happy becomes a torture to me?"
"You're silent, dear friend. But what could you say? We should draw a veil over that which is contrary to nature, and turn away. You were also silent, in the olden time when I informed you through Balder, why I must unfortunately live my life an exceptional creature; an unhappy variety of the species. At first your silence wounded me deeply; I thought, a friend ought not to make us suffer so keenly for what is not our fault. Afterwards I saw that you were right to act as the heavenly powers:
"'Then leave him to his punishment,
Vengeance for ev'ry earthly sin is sent.'
"You remember the reading? 'the sins of the parents upon the children unto the third and fourth generations'?"
He stood still. "I don't understand a single word you're saying, my dear friend. What? You sent by Balder--but do you not know that the conversation he had with you, or rather with the count, was the last that he ever held? And you told him--what? What, for God's sake?"
He had seized her hand and pressed it violently. "Toinette, speak, tell me all. What is done and cannot be undone will at least be more endurable if it is purged of all which the rude hand of malicious chance may have mingled with it. You've misunderstood me; I now learn this for the first time, and I have also misunderstood you. Speak, speak--what thread did death sever, that would have guided us out of the labyrinth into the right path?"