“And things don’t go smoothly, eh? Tell me.”
She hangs her head, and replies, in an earnest childlike tone:
“No, they do not.”
“What! does he not love you?”
“Perhaps he does—just a little. But I must tell you, with me, self-respect comes first of all.... I cannot.... Even should I be forced to break it all off, I will have nothing to blush for.”
I look at her attentively, not without surprise: till now, I had not known her to be of this stamp.
“As for me,” I suddenly burst out, “as for me,—if the man who ruined my life, and took his leave without even a smile or a kind word of farewell, were only to beckon me to him to-day, I would at once follow him like a lamb!”
Then, in the rough, free and easy way of comrades at work, I bid her good-bye with a hand-shake, and walk swiftly away from her door, depressed and uncomfortable; humbled, in a word.
And now, I am in a most vile humour. She has shown herself far more clear-headed than I have. By means of a few commonplaces, she has forced from me an avowal that I never would have made, no, not even to Martha herself!... A pose,—in part at least,—that prodigious self-respect of hers. All the same, she is sacrificing her love to it.
Strange creatures they are! Take Martha’s case: purity! why, she was raving about it.