RUDIN
was all the better for her. Truth was not told to me then, and now I did not recognise it when it was offered me. . . . I have recognised it at last, when it is too late. . . . What is past cannot be recalled. . . . Our lives might have become united, and they never will be united now. How can I prove to you that I might have loved you with real love—the love of the heart, not of the fancy—when I do not know myself whether I am capable of such love?
‘Nature has given me much. I know it, and I will not disguise it from you through false modesty, especially now at a moment so bitter, so humiliating for me. . . . Yes, Nature has given me much, but I shall die without doing anything worthy of my powers, without leaving any trace behind me. All my wealth is dissipated idly; I do not see the fruits of the seeds I sow. I am wanting in something. I cannot say myself exactly what it is I am wanting in. . . . I am wanting, certainly, in something without which one cannot move men’s hearts, or wholly win a woman’s heart; and to sway men’s minds alone is precarious, and an empire ever unprofitable. A strange, almost farcical
198
