“Jenny, don’t torture yourself,” he said brokenly. “And you torture me, too. You know I love you, and I want to marry you.”
“Straight?”
“Yes.”
She sighed deeply, and heavy tears fell down her cheeks. For a while she remained silent.
“You’ve saved my life, Basil,” she said at last. “I made up my mind that if you didn’t want to marry me I’d do away with myself.”
“What nonsense you talk!”
“I mean it. I couldn’t have faced it. I’d fixed it all up in my head—I should have waited till it was dark, and then I’d have gone over the bridge.”
“I will do my best to be a good husband to you, Jenny,” he said.
But when Jenny left him, Basil, utterly bowed down, surrendered himself to an uncontrollable depression. It came to his mind that Miss Ley had likened existence to a game of chess, and now bitterly he recalled each move that he should have played differently: again and again the result hung as on a balance, so that if he had acted otherwise everything would have gone right; but each time the choice appeared to matter so little one way or the other, and it was not till afterwards that he saw the fateful consequence. Every move was irretrievable, but at the moment seemed strangely unimportant; it was not a fair game, for the issue was hidden constantly by a trivial mask. And then it appeared to him as though, alter all, he had never had a choice in the matter; he felt himself powerless in the hand of a greater might, and Fate, for once grown ghastly visible, directed each step as though he were a puppet. Now life before him loomed black and cheerless, and even his child, the thought of which had been his greatest strength, offered no solace.
“Oh, what shall I do?” he moaned—“what shall I do?” He remembered with a shudder Jenny’s threat of suicide, and he knew that she would have carried it out, unhesitating; a sudden impulse seized him in just such a manner to finish with all that doubt and misery. But then, setting his teeth, he sprang up.