Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/135

 and foolish. Even your love-affair appeared to me ridiculous, because I felt that if you had really been as independent and as forceful as was said, then you would have refused to be forced into a marriage against your will.

. At that time I fancied that marriage was the first step toward becoming free, so I consented to it gladly, as no doubt you understand. I had always heard that you were a dull person, steeped in useless learning, and consequently without any knowledge of life, whom any woman could twist about her finger, if she cared to take the trouble.

. Now what do you think of me?

. I think that we might have been very happy.

. As we are to-night. Life is strange. After all our striving, all our efforts to attain happiness, when the inevitable hour arrives and we look into our hearts and ask what has been the sum of sorrow or of happiness in our lives, it may be that the only recollection which is not tinged with sadness, will be that of some idle encounter such as this, which chance has brought, to linger in the memory like a high moment of life, which we cherish as a fond and beautiful dream.

. It takes so little to make us happy—a beautiful night of deep and faultless blue, the murmur of the sea afar off, a vulgar dance here at our side, with its cheap music, and the mutual confidences of our hearts as they search to find words of absolute truth that they may reveal themselves and trust entirely.

. Or verses of favorite poets to speak for us, or silences deep as the night, yet clear as this spread of lucent sky with all its host of stars. Like stars in the night, the eyes are the light of silence.