The sight of happiness which exists despite the cruelty of fate and man, and which is temporarily unconscious of its own liabilities to interruption and extinction, invariably fills me with sadness, and the sadness which arose at the contemplation of these two beings begat in me a strange sympathy for an interest in them.
On Sundays thereafter I would go early to the bridge and wait until they passed, for it proved that this was their habitual Sunday walk. Sometimes they would pause and join those who gazed down at the black river. I would, now and again, resume my journey toward the hospital while they thus stood, and I would look back from a distance. The bridge would then appear to me an abrupt ascent, rising to the dense city, and their figures would stand out clearly against the background.
It became a matter of care to me to observe each Sunday whether the health of either had varied during the previous week. The husband, always pale and slight, showed little change and that infrequently. But the fluctuations of the woman as indicated by complexion, gait, expression and otherwise, were numerous and pronounced. Often she looked brighter and more robust than on the preceding Sunday. Her face would be then rounded out, and the dark crescents beneath her eyes would be less marked. Then I found myself elated.
But on the next Sunday the cheeks had receded slightly, the healthy lustre of the eyes had given way to an ominous glow, the warning of death had returned. Then my heart would sink, and, sighing, I would murmur inaudibly:
“This is one of the bad Sundays.”
There came a time when every Sunday was a bad one.
What made me love this woman? Simply the unmistakable completeness and constancy of her devotion to her husband,—the absorption of the woman in the wife. Had the strange ways of chance ever made known to her my feelings, and had she swerved from that devotion even to render me back love for love, then my own adoration for her would surely have departed.
Yes, I loved her,—if to fill one's life with thoughts of a woman, if in fancy to see her face by day and night, if to have the will to die for her or to bear pain for her, if those and many more things mean love.
My richest joy was to see her content with her husband, and the darkest woe of my life was to anticipate the termination of their happiness.
So the Sundays passed. One afternoon I waited until almost dusk, yet the couple did not appear.