Ecstasy (12 page)

“Tell me, do I not grieve you sorely?” he asked, with the anguish in his eyes, the eyes she now knew so well.

She smiled.

“No …” she said. “I will be honest with you. I have suffered, but I suffer no longer. I have battled with myself for the second time, and I have conquered myself. Will you believe me?”

“If you knew the remorse that I feel …”

She rose and went to him.

“Why?” she asked in a clear voice. “Because you comprehended me, and gave me happiness?”

“Did I do so?”

“Have you forgotten, then?”

“No, but I thought …”

“What?”

“I do not know; I thought that you would – would suffer so, I … I cursed myself …!”

She shook her head gently, with smiling disapproval.

“For shame!” she said. “Do not blaspheme …”

“Can you forgive me?”

“I have nothing to forgive. Listen to me. Swear to me that you believe me, that you believe that you have given me happiness and that I am not suffering.”

“I … I swear.”

“I trust you do not swear this merely to comply with my wish.”

“You have been the highest in my life,” he said, gently.

A rapture shot through her soul.

“Tell me only …” she began.

“What?”

“Tell me if you believe that I, I,
I
… shall always remain the highest in your life.”

She stood before him, tall, in her clinging white. She seemed to shed radiance; never yet had he seen her so beautiful.

“I am certain of that,” he said. “Certain, oh! Certain … My God! how can I convey the certainty of it to you?”

“But I believe you, I believe you,” she exclaimed.

She laughed a laugh of rapture. In her soul a sun
seemed to be shooting out rays on every side. She placed her arm tenderly about his neck and kissed his forehead, a caress of chastity.

For one moment he seemed to forget everything. He too rose, took her in his arms, almost savagely, and clasped her suddenly to him, as if he were about to crush her against his breast. She just caught sight of his sad eyes, and then nothing more, blinded by the kisses of his mouth, which rained upon her whole face in sparks of fire. With the sun-rapture of her soul was mingled a bliss of earth, a yielding to the violence of his embrace. She released herself, put him away, and said:

“And now … go.”

It stunned him; he understood that to be final.

“Yes, yes, I am going,” he said. “I may write to you, may I not?”

She nodded yes, with her smile.

“Write to me, I will write to you too,” she said. “Let me always hear from you …”

“Then these are not to be the last words between us? This … this … is not the end?”

“No …”

“Thank you. Goodbye, Mevrouw, goodbye … Cecile. Ah! if you knew what this moment costs me!”

“It must be. It cannot be otherwise. Go, go. You must go. Do go …”

She gave her hand again, for the last time. A moment later he was gone.

She looked strangely about her, with bewildered eyes, with hands locked together. “Go, go,” she repeated, like one raving. Then she noticed the roses. With a light scream she sank down before the little table and buried her face in his gift, until the thorns wounded her face. The pain, two drops of blood which fell from her forehead, brought her back to her senses. Standing before the little Venetian mirror hanging over her writing-table, she wiped away the red spots with her handkerchief.

“Happiness!” she stammered to herself. “His happiness! The highest in his life! So he knew happiness, though short it was. But now … now he suffers, now he will suffer again as before. The remembrance of happiness cannot do everything. Ah! if it could only do that, then everything would be well, everything … I wish for nothing more, I have had my life, my own life, my own happiness … I have now my children; I belong to them now. To him I was not permitted to be anything more …”

She turned away from the mirror and sat down on the settee, as if tired with a great space traversed; and she closed her eyes, as if stunned with too great a light. She folded her hands together like one in prayer; her face beamed in its fatigue from smile to smile.

“Happiness!” she repeated, falteringly. “The highest in his life! Oh my God, happiness! I thank Thee. Oh God, I thank Thee …”

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