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RUDIN with a worse recollection of me than I deserve. This is why I am writing to you. I do not want either to justify myself or to blame any one whatever except myself; I want, as far as possible, to explain myself. The events of the last days have been so unexpected, so sudden.

‘Our interview to-day will be a memorable lesson to me. Yes, you are right; I did not know you, and I thought I knew you! In the course of my life I have had to do with people of all kinds. I have known many women and young girls, but in you I met for the first time an absolutely true and upright soul. This was something I was not used to, and I did not know how to appreciate you fittingly. I felt an attraction to you from the first day of our acquaintance; you may have observed it. I spent with you hour after hour without learning to know you; I scarcely even tried to know you—and I could imagine that I loved you! For this sin I am punished now.

‘Once before I loved a woman, and she loved me. My feeling for her was complex, like hers for me; but, as she was not simple herself, it 197