“We ought to have known, both of us, that it would be short. I certainly ought to have understood, and if you had reflected you might have known too, but do two people, who are attracted by one another, ever reflect? Do you think I reproach you because one day you ceased to love me and caused me the greatest suffering in my far from happy life—a twofold suffering when I learnt simultaneously that our relations would have consequences which you would have to bear all through life?
“From your letter I see too that those consequences, which have probably been a much greater source of despair to me than to you, in spite of all you may have experienced of worry and bodily suffering, have brought a deeper joy and happiness than anything else in all your life—that the joy of being a mother gives you peace, satisfaction, and courage to live, and that with your child in your arms you think you will have strength to meet all difficulties, economic as well as social, which the future may place in the way of a young woman in your position. It gives me more pleasure than you think to read it. It is to me a fresh proof that the eternal justice, which I have never doubted, exists. To you, who made a mistake because your heart was warm and tender and thirsting for love, this very mistake, which has caused you so many agonizing hours, will in the end bring you all you have sought, in a better, finer, and purer degree than ever you dreamt of, now that your heart is filled with love for your child. And it will increase as he grows and begins to know his mother, to cling to her, and to return her love with a stronger, more profound and conscious affection as the years go by.
“And to me, who received your love, although I should have known that love between us was impossible and unnatural, to me these months have brought indescribable suffering and sorrow and—emptiness. You have no idea, Jenny, how I miss you, your youth, your beauty, the bliss of your love; and every memory of it all is embittered by repentance, an insistent questioning: How could I let her do it? How could I accept it—how believe in the possibility of happiness for myself with her? I did believe it, Jenny, however mad it may sound, because I felt young when I was with you. Remember that I forfeited my own youth when I was much younger than you; the happiness of work and the happiness of love in youth have never been mine, and it was all my own fault. And this was retribution! My dead youth came back to life when I met you; in my heart I did not feel older than you. Nothing is more terrible in life than for a man to be old while his heart is still young.