"Yes, I was in love with him," she replies, in a calm low voice.
"Well, and have you sacrificed your happiness to that abstract theory of yours?"
Another pause.
"Not exactly. … The fact is that I simply could not bear to think I had not been his only love."
There she stops, but I feel she is only waiting for me to question her further: this is the moment when she must lay bare to me what she has hitherto, with her wonted secretiveness, concealed from every eye. Yet I refrain from questions.
Again she speaks, slowly and as one that looks back on memories that are still fresh: "We often spent the winter evenings together. His soul was the thing nearest and dearest to me on earth, but I loved him yet more because his eyes were so mournful and his lips so fine.
"He may have been too outspoken: he desired I should know all about him, before I plighted my troth. I wish I had known nothing; there is bliss only where there is ignorance. … For there have been some instants of forgetfulness; and these have given me an inkling of what my happiness would
