“I want everything,” he said gloweringly.
However, he felt that what she said was true. He was so sure of her affection that, after long hesitation, over many weeks, he asked her one day:
“Will you ever … ?”
“What is it?”
“Be mine.”
He went on:
“… and I yours.”
She smiled:
“But you are mine, my dear.”
“You know what I mean.”
She was a little unhappy: but she took his hands and looked at him frankly:
“No, my dear,” she said tenderly.
He could not speak. She saw that he was hurt.
“Forgive me. I have hurt you. I knew that you would say that to me. We must speak out frankly and in all truth, like good friends.”
“Friends,” he said sadly. “Nothing more?”
“You are ungrateful. What more do you want? To marry me? … Do you remember the old days when you had eyes only for my pretty cousin? I was sad then because you would not understand what I felt for you. Our whole lives might have been changed. Now I think it was better as it has been; it is better that we should never expose our friendship to the test of common life, the daily life, in which even the purest must be debased. …”
“You say that because you love me less.”
“Oh no! I love you just the same.”
“Ah! That is the first time you have told me.”
“There must be nothing hidden from us now. You see, I have not much faith in marriage left. Mine, I know, was not a very good example. But I have thought and looked about me. Happy marriages are very rare. It is a little against nature. You cannot bind together the wills of two people without mutilating one of them, if not both, and it does not even bring the suffering through which it is well and profitable for the soul to pass.”
“Ah!” he said. “But I can see in it a fine thing—the union of two sacrifices, two souls merged into one.”
“A fine thing, in your dreams. In reality you would suffer more than anyone.”
“What! You think I could never have a wife, a family, children? … Don’t say that! I should love them so! You think it impossible for me to have that happiness?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Perhaps with a good woman, not very intelligent, not very beautiful, who would be devoted to you, and would not understand you.”
“How unkind of you! … But you are wrong to make fun of it. A good woman is a fine thing, even if she has no mind.”
“I agree. Shall I find you one?”
“Please! No. You are hurting me. How can you talk like that?”
“What have I said?”
“You don’t love me at all, not at all. You can’t if you can think of my marrying another woman.”
“On the contrary, it is because I love you that I should be happy to do anything which could make you happy.”
“Then, if that is true. …”
“No, no. Don’t go back to that. I tell you, it would make you miserable.”
“Don’t worry about me. I swear to you that I shall be happy! Speak the truth: do you think that you would be unhappy with me?”
“Oh! Unhappy? No, my dear. I respect and admire you too much ever to be unhappy with you. … But, I will tell you: I don’t think anything could make me very unhappy now. I have seen too much. I have become philosophical. … But, frankly—(You want me to? You won’t be angry?)—well. I know my own weakness. I should, perhaps, be foolish enough, after a few months, not to be perfectly happy with you; and I will not have that, just because my affection for you is the most holy thing in the world, and I will not have it tarnished.”
Sadly, he said:
“Yes, you say that, to sweeten the pill. You don’t like me. There are things in me which are odious to you.”
“No, no. I assure you. Don’t look so hangdog. You are the dearest, kindest man. …”
“Then I don’t understand. Why couldn’t we agree?”
“Because we are too different—both too decided, too individual.”
“That is why I love you.”
“I too. But that is why we should find ourselves conflicting.”
“No.”
“Yes. Or, rather, as I know that you are bigger than I, I should reproach myself with embarrassing you with my smaller personality, and then I should be stifled. I should say nothing, and I should suffer.”
Tears came to Christophe’s eyes.
“Oh! I won’t have that. Never! I would rather be utterly miserable than have you suffering through my fault, for my sake.”
“My dear, you mustn’t feel it like that. … You know, I say all that, but I may be flattering myself. … Perhaps I should not be so good as to sacrifice myself for you.”
“All the better.”
“But, then, I should sacrifice you, and that would be misery for me. … You see, there is no solving the difficulty either way. Let us stay as we are. Could there be anything better than our friendship?”
He nodded his head and smiled a little bitterly.
“Yes. That is all very well. But at bottom you don’t love me enough.”
She smiled too, gently, with a little melancholy, and said, with a sigh:
“Perhaps. You are right. I am no longer young. I am tired. Life wears one out unless one is very strong, like you. … Oh! you, there are times when I look at you and you seem to be a boy of eighteen.”
“Alas! With my old face, my wrinkles, my dull skin!”
“I know that you have suffered as much as I—perhaps more. I can see that. But sometimes you look at me with the eyes of a boy, and I feel you giving out a fresh stream
