ou have nothing to complain of. I would have let you down more gently
if I could have taken another month to it; but circumstances have forced
my hand. Abuse me, curse me, if you like. I will make every allowance!"
Pickering listened to all this intently enough to perceive that, as if by
some sudden natural cataclysm, the ground had broken away at his feet,
and that he must recoil. He turned away in dumb amazement. "I don't
know how I seemed to be taking it," he said, "but she seemed really to
desire--I don't know why--something in the way of reproach and
vituperation. But I couldn't, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I
was sickened; I wanted to get away into the air--to shake her off and
come to my senses. 'Have you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?' she
cried, as if she were disappointed, while I stood with my hand on the
door. 'Haven't I treated you to talk enough?' I believed I answered.
'You will write to me then, when you get home?' 'I think not,' said I.
'Six months hence, I fancy, you will come and see me!' 'Never!' said I.
'That's a confession of stupidity,' she answered. 'It means that, even
on reflection, you will never understand the philosophy of my conduct.'
The word 'philosophy' seemed so strange that I verily believe I smiled.
'I have given you all that you gave me,' she went on. 'Your passion was
an affair of the head.' 'I only wish you had told me sooner that you
considered it so!' I exclaimed. And I went my way. The next day I came
down the Rhine. I sat all day on the boat, not knowing where I was
going, where to get off. I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed to
me I had seen something infernal. At last I saw the cathedral towers
here looming over the city. They seemed to say something to me, and when
the boat stopped, I came ashore. I have been here a week. I have not
slept at night--and yet it has been a week of rest!"

It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to recover, and that his own
philosophy, if left to take its time, was adequate to the occasion. After
his story was once told I referred to his grievance but once--that
evening, later, as we were about to separate for the night. "Suffer me
to say that there was some truth in _her_ account of your relations," I
said. "You were using her intellectually, and all the while, without
your knowing it, she was using you. It was diamond cut diamond. Her
needs were the more superficial, and she got tired of the game