"When I was twenty years old, certain clever people found me a wife, a woman five years my senior in time, twenty years my superior in knowledge of the world. Well, six months had not passed before I hated her, hated her with my whole soul. My God, what a thing for a boy to begin life with a woman who made him half the bounden vassal of the devil!"
"You seem generous. The faults were all on her side."
"Madame, I say nothing against the woman, only that she had no soul. We were incompatible as day and night, fire and water. The thing crushed the youth out of me, made me desperate, and worse, made me old beyond my years. I have done my best. I have groped along like a man in the dark, knowing nothing, understanding nothing, save that I had a warm heart in me, and that life seemed one grim jest. The future had no fire for me; I drank the wine of the present, strove to please my senses, plunged into the abysses of the world. Sometimes I tried to pray. Sometimes I played the cynic. The eternal beacon of love had gone out of my life. I had no sun, no inspiration for my soul."
She sprang up suddenly, breathing fast like one who is near tears.
"Why do you speak to me of this?"
"God knows."
His voice was utterly lonely.
"What am I to you? You have hardly seen me three hours in your life. Why do you speak to me of this?"
He put a hand to his throat, and did not look at her.
"Madame, there are people who come near our hearts in one short hour, people who are winter to us to eternity. Do not ask me to explain this truth; as Christ's death, I know it to be true. I trust you. All the logicians of the world could not tell me why. I do not know that I could bring forward one single reason out of my own soul, save that you showed me great mercy once. And now--and now----"