“‘I love Ovid, and Ovid loves me,’ I said. ‘There is my consolation, whatever my troubles may be. Are you not so fortunate?’ A dreadful expression of pain passed over her face. How could I see it, and not feel the wish to sympathise with her? I ran the risk, and said, ‘Do you love somebody, who doesn’t love you?’
“She turned her back on me, and went to the toilet-table. I think she looked at herself in the glass. ‘Well,’ she said, speaking to me at last, ‘what else?’
“‘Nothing else,’ I answered—‘except that I hope I have not offended you.’
“She left the glass as suddenly as she had approached it, and took up the candle again. Once more she held it so that it lit my face.
“‘Guess who he is,’ she said.
“‘How can I do that?’ I asked.
“She quietly put down the candle again. In some way, quite incomprehensible to myself, I seemed to have relieved her. She spoke to me in a changed voice, gently and sadly.
“You are the best of good girls, and you mean kindly. It’s of no use—you can do nothing. Forgive my insolence yesterday; I was mad with envy of your happy marriage engagement. You don’t understand such a nature as mine. So much the better! ah, so much the better! Good-night!’
“There was such hopeless submission, such patient suffering, in those words, that I could not find it in my heart to leave her. I thought of how I might have behaved, of the wild things I might have said, if Ovid had cared nothing for me. Had some cruel man forsaken her? That was her secret. I asked myself what I could do to encourage her. Your last letter, with our old priest’s enclosure, was in my pocket. I took it out.
“‘Would you mind reading a short letter,’ I said, ‘before we wish each other goodnight?’ I held out the priest’s letter.