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errible moment in the room where they used to meet; De Staffelaer in the doorway; Constance fleeing through another door; and his interview with the injured old man, who had been good to him, in a fatherly fashion! And he blamed her for it: it was her fault! He was a young man then, with hardly any knowledge of the world; she, a woman of twenty-eight, married for over five years, had enticed him, had been the temptress! It was she, it was she: he blamed her for it! He had not loved her at first, during the first stages of the flirtation. There had been a chat, a waltz, a jest. Yes, then it had turned to passion; but what was passion? The flame of a moment, flaring up and then extinguished. And he knew it: from that day, when he stood as a culprit in the presence of that dignified old man, from that day the flame was extinguished. And from that day he began to see the life that lay before him: the scandal, which filled all Rome; the despair of his pious parents, far away at home, in Holland; Constance in Florence: their first interview there, himself yielding to his parents' wishes and asking her to be his wife, to marry him in England as soon as the divorce was granted. Since then, he had always seen his fate hanging before him; and it had crushed him, so weak, so small.... Amid the wretchedness, amid the ruin of his young life, beside that woman in whom he, who did not take blame to himself, never lost sight of the worldly-wise temptress four years older than he, beside that woman, the eternal obstacle, and amid that wretchedness, the only grace had been the child. That which might have increased the misery had been the mercy, from the first moment that he set eyes on it, little, red morsel that it was: the darling child; the child that was his, though the fruit of their misery; the child that, as it grew older, became his comfort; the child that felt with its little hands over his face and in his hair; the child that said "Daddy;" the child that he smothered in his arms! The child, her child, it was true, but his child also: his child, his son, growing up and soon becoming the little moderator between them and the reason, also, why they remained together; the child, growing up to boyhood and, without understanding or knowing, still feeling the eternal struggle, the eternal misery, until its eyes became more grave and it felt that it was the moderator and the comforter. The child, there it sat, opposite him: his handsome
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