“When you pardoned you didn’t think so. Do you believe that now you can again change your opinion?” she asked, as she strove in vain to hide a little anxiety in the question.
“It is useless,” he replied desolately, “I know myself. I am a straightforward man. I can’t change the idea which for two years has caused me to suffer as I have never suffered. I am too straightforward, and for this I pity you. I can’t change; when one is a man like I am one can’t pardon dishonour and absolve betrayal.”
She lowered her eyes and said no more, though she seemed very calm and indifferent.
“Well?” he said, questioning her anxiously.
“I have none,” she added, with the same simplicity.
“None? Nothing? Does nothing of this matter to you?” he cried, surprised.
“It would matter very much to me, if I could bring you a remedy. Your sufferings once moved me very much, you know, and I believed I could cure them. I have not succeeded. You haven’t wished to know me as a consoler. My mission here has failed completely. Instead of doing you good I am doing you harm. And in exchange you load me every time you can with expressions of your loathing and contempt. What is to be done? There is no remedy.”
“If you had liked, there could have been,” he replied in a low voice.
“Exactly, exactly!” she exclaimed, smiling ironically. “I ought to have had a great passion for you. That was necessary for your jealousy and _amour propre_--a great passion;” and the smile became more ironical.
“And you did not succeed? Is it not so?” he cried, trembling.
“I haven’t even tried,” she replied, seriously and nobly. “I never returned for that, I never promised it; I couldn’t give it.”
“Then it would have been better not to have returned;” and the man’s fury increased.
“It would have been better,” replied the woman still more austerely.
“It would be better, then, for you to go away,” cried the man, blind with fury.
“It would certainly be better,” she said austerely and finally.
She rose from her seat, crossed the room, and disappeared.
The long, strident whistle of the large white steamer, the _Vierwaldstettersee_, had already sounded twice in a vain appeal. The little landing-place at Fluelen was deserted. Every day, from the beginning of July to the middle of September, a varied crowd had arrived from Italy by the trains which cross the wonderful Gothard route, and from Switzerland especially, for familiar excursions to Tellsplatz and Altdorf, to take their places on the boat to cross to the winding flowery shores of the lake of the four cantons, to the large and small summer stations, and to the little villages gleaming white among the trees with their red roofs. But now no longer. It is October; the last travellers one by one have returned to their homes, and Fluelen is deserted. The white steamer, too, has been deserted for a long time, and performs a journey of obligation on a deserted lake among deserted shores.