CHAPTER IX. · 2

“Then you desire nothing more?” I questioned.

“Nothing impossible,” he replied, divining my thought. “How wet you have made your head,” he went on, caressing me like a child, and passing his hand again over my hair; “you are jealous of the leaves and grass which the rain was falling on; you would like to be the grass and the leaves and the rain; while I—I enjoy simply seeing them, as I do seeing whatever is good, young, happy.”

“And you regret nothing in the past?” I persisted, with the dull weight on my heart growing heavier and heavier.

He seemed to muse for a moment, keeping silent. I saw that he wished to answer honestly.

“No!” he said, at length, briefly.

“That is not true! that is not true!” I cried, turning and facing him, with my eyes fixed upon his. “You do not regret the past?”

“No!” he repeated. “I bless it, but I do not regret it.”

“And you would not wish to go back to it?”

He turned away, looking out over the garden.

“I no more wish that than I would wish to have wings. It cannot be.”

“And you would not re-make this past? And you reproach neither yourself, nor me?”

“Never! all has been for the best.”

“Listen!” said I, seizing his hand to force him to turn towards me. “Listen! Why did you never tell me what you wished from me, that I might have lived exactly as you desired? Why did you give me a liberty which I knew not how to use? why did you cease to teach me? If you had wished it, if you had cared to guide me differently, nothing, nothing would have happened,” I went on, in a voice which more and more energetically expressed anger and reproach, with none of the former love.

“What is it that would not have happened?” said he with surprise, turning towards me. “There has been nothing. All is well, very well,” he repeated smiling.

“Can it be possible,” I thought, that he does not understand me? “or, worse still, that he will not understand me?” and my tears began to fall.

“This would have happened,—that, not having made me guilty towards you, you would not have punished me by your indifference, your contempt,” I broke out. “What would not have happened is seeing myself, with no fault on my own part, suddenly robbed by you of all that was dear to me.”

“What are you saying, my darling?” he exclaimed, as if he had not understood my words.

“No, let me finish! You have robbed me of your confidence, your love, even of your esteem, and this because I ceased to believe that you still loved me after what had taken place! No,” I went on, checking him again as he was about to interrupt me, “for once I must speak out all that has been torturing me so long! Was I to blame because I did not know life, and because you left me to find it out for myself?... And am I to blame that now,—when at last I comprehend, of myself, what is necessary in life; now, when for more than a year I have been making a struggle to return to you,—you constantly repulse me, constantly pretend not to know what I want? and things are so arranged that there is never anything for you to reproach yourself with, while I am left to be miserable and guilty? Yes, you would cast me back again into that life which must make wretchedness for me and for you!”

“And how am I doing that?” he asked, with sincere surprise and alarm.

“Did not you tell me yesterday,—yes, you tell me so perpetually,—that the life here does not suit me, and that we must go to St. Petersburg again for the winter? Instead of supporting me,” I continued, “you avoid all frankness with me, any talk that is sweet, and real. And then if I fall, you will reproach me with it, or you will make light of it!”

“Stop, stop,” he said severely and coldly; “what you are saying is not right. It only shows that you are badly disposed towards me, that you do not....”

“That I do not love you! say it! say it, then!” I exclaimed, blind with my tears. I sat down on the bench, and covered my face with my handkerchief.

“That is the way he understands me!” I thought, trying to control my choking sobs. “It is all over with our old love!” said the voice in my heart. He did not come near me, and made no attempt to console me. He was wounded by what I had said. His voice was calm and dry, as he began:

“I do not know what you have to reproach me with, except that I do not love you as I used to do!”

“As you used to love me!...” I murmured under my handkerchief, drenching it with bitter tears.

“And for that, time and ourselves are equally guilty. For each period there is one suitable phase of love....”

He was silent.

“And shall I tell you the whole truth, since you desire frankness? Just as, during that first year of our acquaintance, I spent night after night without sleep, thinking of you and building up my own love, until it grew to fill all my heart, so in St. Petersburg and while we were abroad I spent fearful nights in striving to break down and destroy this love which was my torment. I could not destroy it, but I did at least destroy the element which had tormented me; I became tranquil, and yet I continued to love you,—but it was with another love.”

“And you call that love, when it was nothing but a punishment!” I replied. “Why did you let me live in the world, if it appeared to you so pernicious that because of it you would cease to love me?”

“It was not the world, my dear, that was the guilty one.”