Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Part 62

He shrank as from a blow.

"That is not true," he said wearily. "But how can I hope you will believe me?"

She answered nothing.

"Once you told me that there was no sin you would not pardon me!" he muttered.

She replied:

"We pardon sin; we do not pardon baseness."

She paused and put her hand to her heart; then she spoke again in that cold, forced, measured voice, which seemed on his ear as hard and pitiless as the strokes of an iron hammer, beating life out beneath it.

"You will leave Hohenszalras; you will go where you will; you have the revenues of Idrac. Any other financial arrangements that you may wish to make I will direct my lawyers to carry out. If the revenues of Idrac be insufficient to maintain you"----

"Do not insult me--so," he murmured, with a suffocated sound in his voice, as though some hand were clutching at his throat.

"Insult _you_!" she echoed with a terrible scorn.

She resumed with the same inflexible calmness,

"You must live as becomes the rank due to my husband. The world need suspect nothing. There is no obligation to make it your confidante. If any one were wronged by the usurpation of the name you took it would be otherwise, but as it is you will lose nothing in the eyes of men; Society will not flatter you the less. The world will only believe that we are tired of one another, like so many. The blame will be placed on me. You are a brilliant comedian, and can please and humour it. I am known to be a cold, grave, eccentric woman, a recluse, of whom it will deem it natural that you are weary. Since you allow that I have the right to separate from you--to deal with you as with a criminal--you will not seek to recall your existence to me. You will meet my abstinence by the only amends you can make to me. Let me forget--as far as I am able--let me forget that ever you have lived!"

He staggered slightly, as if under some sword-stroke from an unseen hand. A great faintness came upon him. He had been prepared for rage, for reproach, for bitter tears, for pa.s.sionate vengeance; but this chill, pa.s.sionless, disdainful severance from him for all eternity he had never dreamed of; it crept like the cold of frost into his very marrow; he was speechless and mute with shame. If she had dragged him through all the tribunals of the world she would have hurt him and humiliated him far less. Better all the hooting gibes of the whole earth than this one voice, so cold, so inflexible, so full of utter scorn!

Despite her bodily weakness she rose to her full height, and for the first time looked at him.

"You have heard me," she said; "now go!"

But instead, blindly, not knowing what he did, he fell at her feet.

"But you loved me," he cried, "you loved me so well!"

The tears were coursing down his cheeks.

She drew the sables of her robe from his touch.

"Do not recall _that_," she said, with a bitter smile. "Women of my race have killed men before now for less outrage than yours has been to me."

"Kill me!" he cried to her. "I will kiss your hand."

She was mute.

He clung to her gown with an almost convulsive supplication.

"Believe, at least, that _I_ loved _you_!" he cried, beside himself in his misery and impotence. "Believe that, at the least!"

She turned from him.

"Sir, I have been your dupe for ten long years; I can be so no more!"

Under that intolerable insult he rose slowly, and his eyes grew blind, and his limbs trembled, but he walked from her, and sought not again either her pity or her pardon.

On the threshold he looked back once. She stood erect, one hand resting upon the carved work of her high oak chair; cold, stately, motionless, the furred velvets falling to her feet like a queen's robes.

He looked, then pa.s.sed the threshold and closed the door behind him.

THE END.