Читать книгу Kobiety (Women). A Novel of Polish Life онлайн

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She is silent a while, debating with herself; and then:

“Yes, I was in love with him,” she replies, in a calm low voice.

“Well, and have you sacrificed your happiness to that abstract theory of yours?”

Another pause.

“Not exactly.... The fact is that I simply could not bear to think I had not been his only love.”

There she stops, but I feel she is only waiting for me to question her further: this is the moment when she must lay bare to me what she has hitherto, with her wonted secretiveness, concealed from every eye. Yet I refrain from questions.

Again she speaks, slowly and as one that looks back on memories that are still fresh: “We often spent the winter evenings together. His soul was the thing nearest and dearest to me on earth, but I loved him yet more because his eyes were so mournful and his lips so fine.

“He may have been too outspoken: he desired I should know all about him, before I plighted my troth. I wish I had known nothing; there is bliss only where there is ignorance.... For there have been some instants of forgetfulness; and these have given me an inkling of what my happiness would have been—how immense, how incredible—had I been his only love in the past, as I am (it yet may be) his only love in the present.