Alas! did I not know?—and most bitterly!
‘But of course you do not. How should you!’ she went on.
How should I indeed?—And she smiled at me in lovely apology, thereby cutting me to the quick. For did not her words, her look, show how wholly innocent and ignorant she was of all personal feeling on my part?
Well, and if so, what had I to complain of? Earlier, had it not been an integral element in that mystic, fantastic inner life of mine, to conceive of her loving the dear boy as deeply, eternally; even though as hopelessly, as I loved her? Now that my conception proved true in fact, what cause had I to be hurt, and to shrink? Was it not inconsistent, illogical, a very height of unreason? I took myself to task for my folly; but I suffered. Meanwhile an idea occurred to me, but I dared not put it into execution yet. In Fédore’s letter was one lie which could and, in justice to the dear boy, ought to be refuted. But I must wait until I could judge better of Nellie’s powers of endurance, and better trust my own calmness and nerve in handling a very delicate subject.
Now I only said to her:
‘Will you trust me with this letter, and let me keep it for the present?’
‘Why?’
‘Because—forgive me if I seem to preach to you—as long as it remains in your possession, you cannot, I think, but read and re-read it.’
‘That is true,’ she said.
‘And each time you do so, you renew your own pain, renew—quite naturally—your sense of injury, of anger at the insult offered you. Yet this renewal works to no good end. It is useless, merely causing you to move in a vicious circle, since it cannot alter the facts or affect the result.’