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RUDIN was all the better for her. Truth was not told to me then, and now I did not recognise it when it was offered me. I have recognised it at last, when it is too late. What is past cannot be recalled. Our lives might have become united, and they never will be united now. How can I prove to you that I might have loved you with real love—the love of the heart, not of the fancy—when I do not know myself whether I am capable of such love?

‘Nature has given me much. I know it, and I will not disguise it from you through false modesty, especially now at a moment so bitter, so humiliating for me. Yes, Nature has given me much, but I shall die without doing anything worthy of my powers, without leaving any trace behind me. All my wealth is dissipated idly; I do not see the fruits of the seeds I sow. I am wanting in something. I cannot say myself exactly what it is I am wanting in. I am wanting, certainly, in something without which one cannot move men’s hearts, or wholly win a woman’s heart; and to sway men’s minds alone is precarious, and an empire ever unprofitable. A strange, almost farcical 198