uch
suffering this heavy trial causes you?" She suddenly looked him full in
the face, her features no longer distorted by passion, but an
expression of such hopeless grief rested on her brow and lips, that he
shrank back in alarm.

"He told you _all_? Yes, all he knew of his own heart. What could he
have said to you of mine? What does he know about it? True, it's not
his fault. I've always been ashamed to unbosom myself, to confess how I
idolize him, how madly I love him. It might be unwelcome to him, I
thought, since he--well, you know, for you're his friend; what he said
about his 'intellectual love' sounded so pretty, very pretty for a
philosopher and commendable for his wife also, if she had as much
philosophy in her head as he expected, and no unbridled, tumultuous
heart, that refused to listen to reason. 'If he should perceive,' I
thought, 'that I have my mother's blood in my veins, hot, old-testament
blood--perhaps he'll discover that he made a great mistake in thinking
he could make a "sensible marriage" with such a nature, as a
consolation for a lost love.' And then I also thought: 'who knows what
may happen? Perhaps the day will come when I can tell him all, because
he himself will no longer be satisfied with a modest happiness, but ask
something prouder, higher, more enthusiastic, and then I can say to
him: "you need not seek far, still waters run deep; you've yet to know
your own wife, with whom you have lived so long unsuspicious of her
true nature."' I was going to say it to him when he returned from this
pedestrian tour; it seemed to me, from his letters, as if the last
spark of the old fire had burned out, and he was longing for a new
passion, a fervent love, which would completely engulf him, and after
four years of married life, he now, for the first time, loved me with a
new, yearning, longing affection. It gave me such delight. But I was
rightly served; my weakness or delusion, or whatever it may have
been--must be punished. Why did I not confess to him at once, that I
should be miserable if he only chose me for his wife on account of my
few intellectual qualities? Why did I not tell him I, too, must have
all or nothing, and was far less suited for a 'sensible marriage,' than
many a far more foolish creature? Now my fate has overtaken me--and
his, him--and you want, by means of a few friendly, sensible arguments
to heal the breech which has burst open again, the breech which ought
never to have been