Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/220

196 Of course, it's settled. I am the most monstrous of men! But then, Blandine, art not thou thyself a monster to attach thyself to such a being as I?"

"And who knows," jeered the unhappy man, with the sardonic sneer of a wretch exposed to torture, "if it is not my exceptional nature, my alleged anomaly, which flatters thy imaginings? Who will prove to me that in thy devotion there is not an element of sexual perversion, as the sciolists say; something of that pleasure in suffering, which they call by the pretty name of Masochism? In that case thy beautiful self-sacrifice would only stand for madness and disease for some, and crime and disgrace in the eyes of others. Oh, virtue! Oh, sanity! Where are you?"

Never before had he gone at her with such bitter onslaught.

"Alas!" she mused, "to think that it is I who cause him so much misery. I who no longer know what to give up for him; I who, for the sake of his peace, have agreed to live such a life, O Lord!"

"Henry, my dear Henry, " she implored him, be silent, O my God! be silent. Only say what thou wishest me to do? I