"So can she—even better."
"You are cruel, Christophe."
"My dear fellow. I'm being brutal to you just to make you lash out. Good Lord! It is perfectly shameful of you to sacrifice those who love you, and your life, to a woman who doesn't care for you."
"What do I care for those who love me? I love her."
"Work. Your old interests…."
"… Don't interest me any longer. I'm sick of it all. I seem to have passed out of life altogether. Everything seems so far away…. I see, but I don't understand…. And to think that there are men who never grow tired of winding up their clockwork every day, and doing their dull work, and their newspaper discussions, and their wretched pursuit of pleasure, men who can be violently for or against a Government, or a book, or an actress…. Oh! I feel so old! I feel nothing, neither hatred, nor rancor against anybody. I'm bored with everything. I feel that there is nothing in the world…. Write? Why write? Who understands you? I used to write only for one person: everything that I did was for her…. There is nothing left: I'm worn out, Christophe, fagged out. I want to sleep."
"Sleep, then, old fellow. I'll sit by you."
But sleep was the last thing that Olivier could have. Ah! if only a sufferer could sleep for months until his sorrow is no more and has no part in his new self; if only he could sleep until he became a new man! But that gift can never be his: and he would not wish to have it. The worst suffering of all were to be deprived of suffering. Olivier was like a man in a fever, feeding on his fever: a real fever which came in regular waves, being at its height in the evening when the light began to fade. And the rest of the day it left him shattered, intoxicated by love, devoured by memory, turning the same thought over and over like an idiot chewing the same mouthful again and again without being able to swallow it, with all the forces of his brain paralyzed, grinding slowly on with the one fixed idea.
He could not, like Christophe, resort to cursing his injuries and honestly blackguarding the woman who had dealt them. He was more clear-sighted and just, and he knew that he had his share of the responsibility, and that he was not the only one to suffer: Jacqueline also was a victim:—she was his victim. She had trusted herself to him: how had he dealt with his trust? If he was not strong enough to make her happy, why had he bound her to himself? She was within her rights in breaking the ties which chafed her.
"It is not her fault," he thought. "It is mine. I have not loved her well. And yet I loved her truly. But I did not know how to love since I did not know how to win her love."