A Book o' Nine Tales Part 5

_He._ I confess it never struck me so.

_She._ It did not me always. It was while I was in Britany--where I got this peasant dress; isn't it quaint?--that I learned to know the sea.

It judged me; it reiterated one burden over and over until it seemed to me that I should go mad; yet at the same time its calmness gave me self-control. If there had been the slightest trace of anger or relenting in its accusations, I could have turned away easily enough, and shaken its influence all off. But it was like an awful tribunal before which I had to stand silent, and review my past as interpreted by inexorable justice,--with no palliations, no shams, nothing but honest truth. But why should I say all this rigmarole to you? You must be amused,--if you are not too much bored, that is.

_He._ On the contrary, I thank you very much.

_She._ For what?

_He._ First, for your confidence in me; and second, for telling me an experience so like my own. It was not the sea, but circ.u.mstances that delivered me over to myself,--a long, slow convalescence, in which I, too, had an interview with the Nemesis of truth, and found a carefully built structure of shams and self-deception go down as mist before the sun. The most frightful being in the world to encounter is one's estranged better self.

_She._ That is true. No one but myself could have persuaded me that it was I who was to blame. The more I was argued with, the more I believed myself a martyr, and my husband--

_He._ Your husband?

_She._ I have betrayed myself. I am not mademoiselle, but madame.

_He._ But I see no--

_She._ No ring? True; I returned that to my husband before I went to Britany.

_He._ And in Britany?

_She._ In Britany I would have given the world to have it back again.

_He._ But your husband? Did he accept it so easily?

_She._ What else can a man do when his wife casts him off?

_He._ Do? Oh, it is considered proper in such cases, I believe, for him to make a violent pretence of not accepting his freedom.

_She._ You seem to be sure he considered it freedom!

_He._ Pardon me. I forgot for the moment that you were his wife.

_She._ Compliments do not please me.

_He._ Then you are not a woman.

_She._ Will you be serious?

_He._ Why should I be--at a ball?

_She._ Because I choose.

_He._ Oh, good and sufficient reason!

_She._ But tell me soberly,--you are a man,--what could my husband have done?

_He._ Do you mean to make my ideas standards by which to try him?

_She._ Perhaps yes; perhaps no. At least tell me what you think.

_He._ A man need not accept a dismissal too easily.

_She._ But what then?

_He._ He might have followed; he might have argued. It is scarcely possible that you alone were to blame. Was there nothing in which he might have acknowledged himself wrong,--nothing with which he should reproach himself?

_She._ How can I tell what took place in his heart? I only know my own.

He may have repented somewhat, or he may not. As for following-- You do not know my husband. He is just, just, just. It was his one fault, I thought then. It took time for me to appreciate the worth of such a virtue.

_He._ But what has that to do with following you?

_She._ 'She has chosen,' he would reason. 'Let the event punish her; it is only right that she should suffer for her own act.'

_He._ But is his justice never tempered by mercy?

_She._ The highest mercy is to be just. To palliate is merely to postpone sentence.

_He._ You are the first woman I ever met who would acknowledge that.

_She._ Few women, I hope, have been taught by an experience so hard as mine. But how dolefully we are talking. Do say something amusing; we are at a ball.

_He._ I might give you an epigram for the one with which you served me a moment ago, and retort that to be amusing is to be insincere.

_She._ Then--for we came to be amused--why are we here?

_He._ Manifestly because we prize insincerity.

_She._ You are right. I came to get away from myself. One must do something, and even the dissipations of charity pall after a time.

_He._ We seem to be in much the same frame of mind, and perhaps cannot do better than to stay where we are, consorting darkly, while the others take pains to amuse themselves. So we get through the evening, that is the main thing.

_She._ You have forgotten to be as complimentary as you were half an hour since.

_He._ Have I? And yet the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman is sincerity.

_She._ If he does not love her, yes.

_He._ Ah, then you agree with Tom Moore:

"While he lies, his heart is yours; But oh! you've wholly lost the youth, The instant that he tells you truth!"

_She._ Perhaps; but it is no matter, since we were not talking of love.

_He._ But if we were?

_She._ If we were we should undoubtedly say a great many foolish things and quite as many false ones.