Part 47 (2/2)

Treurenberg has gone towards the door, when he suddenly pauses and collects himself. He will make one more attempt to be reconciled with his wife, and it shall be the last. He turns towards her again.

”Yes,” he admits, ”I have treated you inconsiderately, and your wounding of my pride, perhaps unintentionally, does not excuse me. I have been wrong,--I have neglected you. I play,--yes, Selina, I play,--I seek the society of strangers, but only because I am far, far more of a stranger at home. Selina,” he goes on, carried away by his emotion, and in a voice which expresses his utter misery, ”I cannot reconcile myself to life amid your surroundings; call it want of character, weakness, sensitiveness, as you please, but I cannot. Come away with me; let us retire to any secluded corner of the earth, and I will make it a paradise for you by my grat.i.tude and devotion; I will serve you on my knees; my life shall be yours, only come away with me!”

Poor Lato! he has wrought his own ruin. Why does he not understand that every word he speaks wounds the most sensitive part of her,--her vanity?

”You would withdraw me from my surroundings? And, pray, what society do you offer me in exchange?” she asks, bitterly. ”My acquaintances are not good enough for you; I am not good enough for the atmosphere in which you used to live.”

He sees his error, perceives that he has offended her, and it pains him.

”Selina,” he says, softly, ”there shall be no lack of good friends for you at my side; and then, after all, what need have we of other people?

Can we not find our happiness in each other? What if G.o.d should bless us with an angel like the one He has taken from us?”

He kneels beside her and kisses her hand, but she withdraws it hastily.

”Do not touch me!” she exclaims; ”I am not Olga!”

He starts to his feet as if stung by a serpent. ”What do you mean?”

”What I say.”

”I do not understand you!”

”Hypocrite!” she gasps, her jealousy gaining absolute mastery of her; ”I am not blind; do you suppose I do not know upon whom you lavish kind words and caresses every day, which fall to my share only when you want some favour of me?”

It seems to him that he hears the rustle of feminine garments in the next room. ”For G.o.d's sake, Selina, not so loud,” he whispers.

”Ah! your first emotion is dread of injuring her; all else is indifferent to you. It does not even occur to you to repel my accusation.”

”Accusation?” he murmurs, hopelessly. ”I do not yet understand of what you accuse me.”

”Of your relations with that creature before my very eyes!”

Transported with indignation at these words, he lifts his hand, possessed by a mad impulse to strike her, but he controls himself so far as only to grasp her by the arm.

”Creature!” he exclaims, furiously. ”Creature! Are you mad? Olga!--why, Olga is pure as an angel, more spotless than a snowflake before it has touched the earth.”

”I have no faith in such purity. If she has not actually fallen, her pa.s.sion is plainly shown in her eyes. But there shall be no open scandal,--she must go. I will not have her in the house,--she must go!”

”She must go!” Treurenberg repeats, in horror. ”You would turn her out of doors,--a young, inexperienced, beautiful girl? Selina, I will go, and the sooner the better for all I care, but she must stay.”

”How you love her!” sneers the Countess.

For a moment there is silence in the room. Lato gazes at his wife as if she were something strange which he had never seen before,--gazes at her in amazement mingled with horror. His patience is at an end; he forgets everything in the wild desire to break asunder the fetters which have bound him for so long, to be rid of the self-control which has so tortured him.

”Yes,” he says, raising his voice, ”I love her,--love her intensely, unutterably; but this is the first time that I have admitted it even to myself, and you have brought me to do so. I have struggled against this pa.s.sion night and day, have denied its existence, have done all that I could to stifle it, and I have tried to the utmost to be reconciled with you, to begin with you a new life in which I could hope to forget her. How you have seconded me you know. Of one thing, however, I can a.s.sure you,--the last word has been uttered between you and myself; it would not avail you now though you should sue for a reconciliation on your knees. A woman without tenderness or compa.s.sion I abhor. I have a horror of you!” He turns sway, and the door closes behind him.

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