Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/831



FTER tramping up and down the streets all afternoon in the snow, I find myself home at last. The lamp's turned up and my cigar is lit. My books surround me with an atmosphere of cozy intimacy. The various appointments of the room fairly radiate comfort and induce amiable reverie. But to no avail. Try as I may, I can focus my mind on nothing else.

But was she not, in her relation to me, as good as dead, ever so long ago? She is indeed dead quite a long time or—as, with the infantile pathos of the betrayed, I humoured myself into fancying—"worse than dead." And what, in the last instance, is the nature of my emotions, now that I have come to accept that she is not "worse than dead"; but just dead—dead like a multitude of others who sleep yonder under the soil, who sleep uninterruptedly; when spring arrives, and when sultry summer flames and when snow drifts down, as to-day. So utterly without hope of resurrection! What do I feel, now that I know that even for me, she didn't pass away a second sooner than she passed away for the rest of the world? Pangs? Hardly. Only that familiar cold shudder that is bound to lay hold of you when some being who was once an integral part of you is deposited in a grave; a being, it may be, whose presence keeps haunting you, with a memory of a look or the faltering inflection of the voice.

It was of course piercingly tragic when I first unmasked her hypocrisy. But what, at bottom, lay concealed behind it all? Anger, sudden hate, black pessimism, and naturally scotched vanity. Suffering came long after. One consolation was the dearly bought knowledge that she herself was suffering greatly. I have them all—haven't I?—the dozens of letters imploring forgiveness, sobbing and wailing their heart out. Whenever I feel the impulse to do so, I can read them over. As for herself, why, I can still picture her, as I stepped out of the house, standing at the corner of the street