FullReads

My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to find out what some other man thought of me. Don’t be too hard on me! Listen first–consider. When I first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had married early and led the quietest kind of life; I had had no “experiences.” From the hour of our first meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any other man, and never noticed whether any other man looked at me. When he died, five years ago, I knew the extent of my powers no more than a baby. Was it too late to find out? Should I never know why?

Forgive me–forgive me. You are so young; it will be an episode, a mere “document,” to you so soon! And, besides, it wasn’t as deliberate, as cold-blooded as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn’t plan it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more complex than any rendering of it can be. I liked you from the first–I was drawn to you (you must have seen that)–I wanted you to like me; it was not a mere psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it was that, too–I must be honest. I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that had to be laid.

At first I was afraid–oh, so much afraid–that you cared for me only because I was Silvia, that you loved me because you thought Rendle had loved me. I began to think there was no escaping my destiny.

How happy I was when I discovered that you were growing jealous of my past; that you actually hated Rendle! My heart beat like a girl’s when you told me you meant to follow me to Venice.

After our parting at Villa d’Este my old doubts reasserted themselves. What did I know of your feeling for me, after all? Were you capable of analyzing it yourself? Was it not likely to be two-thirds vanity and curiosity, and one-third literary sentimentality? You might easily fancy that you cared for Mary Anerton when you were really in love with Silvia– the heart is such a hypocrite! Or you might be more calculating than I had supposed. Perhaps it was you who had been flattering my vanity in the hope (the pardonable hope!) of turning me, after a decent interval, into a pretty little essay with a margin.

When you arrived in Venice and we met again–do you remember the music on the lagoon, that evening, from my balcony?–I was so afraid you would begin to talk about the book–the book, you remember, was your ostensible reason for coming. You never spoke of it, and I soon saw your one fear was I might do so–might remind you of your object in being with me. Then I knew you cared for me! yes, at that moment really cared! We never mentioned the book once, did we, during that month in Venice?

I have read my letter over; and now I wish that I had said this to you instead of writing it. I could have felt my way then, watching your face and seeing if you understood. But, no, I could not go back to Venice; and I could not tell you (though I tried) while we were there together. I couldn’t spoil that month–my one month. It was so good, for once in my life, to get away from literature….

You will be angry with me at first–but, alas! not for long. What I have done would have been cruel if I had been a younger woman; as it is, the experiment will hurt no one but myself. And it will hurt me horribly (as much as, in your first anger, you may perhaps wish), because it has shown me, for the first time, all that I have missed….