FullReads

“The rest you know.

“It is not you who need pity!

“You have the pain of an imperishable loyalty in your soul. It is like a glory in your face, in spite of all you have suffered. As I look at you, it seems but yesterday that all was well between us.

“I lost much in losing you.

“Nor am I sure that you were right to go! But that was for your own nature to decide. In your place I should have fought Fate, I expected you to do it.

“I loved her first, because she satisfied my eyes. I loved her the more that she was denied to me! Yet I knew always that this love was not in me what it was in you. With me it was, like many other emotions of a similar sort–a sentiment that would pass. I tried to think otherwise. But I had awakened her heart, and you, to whom the law had given her, were gone!

“I waited long for your return, or for some sign.

“You neither came nor spoke.

“I argued that something must be done. I owed it to her to offer her my protection.

“I came back here. I met her on this very spot. I said to her, ‘You are alone in the world–your mother has married–she has other children. I have saddened your life with my love. Let me at least help to cheer it again. You need affection. Here it is–in my arms!’

“And, while I waited for her answer, I prayed with all my soul that she might deny me.

“God bless her! She did! I turned away from her with a glad heart, and in that heart I enshrined this woman, who, loving me, had denied me. There I set up her image, pure and inviolate. Two long years I stayed away from her, and as I worked, I worshipped her, and out of that worship I wrought a great thing.

“With time, however, her real image grew faint within me. Other emotions, other experiences seemed to blur and dim it. In spite of myself, I returned here. Once more I stood on this spot, within the gaze of her deep eyes. I began to believe that a love everlasting, all enduring, had been given me! But still it was passion that pleaded for possession, and still it was self-knowledge that looked on in fear.

“Passion bade me plead: ‘You love me! You need me! Come to me!’ And fear kept my heart still, in dread of her consent.

“But she looked up into my face with eyes that seemed to widen under mine, and simply whispered, ‘My mother.’ The heart that knew and understood now all that sad history seemed to feel that her act might re-open the mother’s old wound; that the verdict ‘like mother, like daughter’ would turn virtue back to sin again.

“Once more I went out into the world with a light heart! Her virtue, her strength, seemed to be mine. I went back to my work with renewed spirit, back to my life with no new self-reproach.

“But once more I swung round the circle. With a perversity that, dreading success, and conscious of fear, yet longs to strive for what it dreads to win, I returned to her again. The death of her mother was my new excuse.

“She came to me–here, as usual. But this time she came leading by the hand her little sister, and I felt her armored against me even before I spoke.

“You, who used to believe in a merciful God, can you explain to me why he has left in the nature of man, created–so you believe–in His own image–that impulse to destroy that which he loves? I loved her for exactly what she was. I loved her because she had the courage to resist me. Yet from each denial so ardently desired, so thankfully received, my soul sprang up strengthened in desire. Safe above me I worshipped her. Once in my arms, I knew, only too well, that even that love would pass as all other emotions had done. I knew I should put her aside, gently if I could, urgently, if I must, and pass on. That is my Fate! Everything that enters my life leaves something I need–and departs! For what I have not, I hunger. What I win soon wearies me. It is the price life exacts for what it gives me.