I again met the charming woman to whom I owe the story of the Florentine love affairs just related.

"What news of Don Giovanni?" I asked.

"I saw him yesterday, by chance. He confessed that he did not know the reason of his exile. I gently insinuated that the husband might have something to do with it. The idea made him laugh, and he answered: 'Anything is likelier than that!' which made me laugh in my turn."

"All blind, then?"

"And the result: Peace and happiness."

"And clear vision?"

"Clear vision would simply mean tragedy, because of each one regarding his own infidelities as unimportant, only to reach the unexpected conclusion that those of his partner are unforgivable crimes. Not logical, but very human."

"And do you not think that conjugal fidelity is human, too?"

"Excuse me, I expressly told you that I had once seen a case of it."

"And might one hear the story of this solitary case?"

"An uneventful drama. Nothing is less romantic than virtue. You must be aware of that."

"But does happiness lie in romance?"

"That I cannot say. Possibly, because the reality will never equal the dream. At all events, my faithful pair were the most unhappy mortals I have ever known."

"Do tell me about them."

"Oh, it is very simple. You know that I was brought up in England, near the little town of Dorking. I still have friends there whom I visit occasionally, when I want a change from Italy. Surrey is a picturesque region, where lazy rivers wind their way to the sea between green banks, through wide, fertile valleys at the foot of wooded hills. Everywhere woods and streams, and ravines crested with yews and ancient oaks. Pale, misty skies spread a mother-of-pearl canopy over the wide expanses of thick grass. It is a fox hunting country, and I humbly confess that there are to my mind few pleasures in life equal to the wild intoxication of a mad, aimless gallop, in which, what with hedges and ditches, rivers and precipices, one risks breaking one's neck a hundred times a day. You will from current pictures of it get a fairly good idea of the sport. It is a headlong rush to get—one does not clearly know where. Nothing stops one, nothing furnishes a sufficient reason for turning back. Onward, and still onward! The horses themselves are infected with the general madness. Accidents make no difference. A fallen horse scrambles to his feet again, an unseated rider gets back into the saddle. Some are carried home on stretchers. At night the fallen are counted. In three curt words their friends sympathize with them for having to wait three weeks before going at it again.

"A few years ago, in one of these hunting tumults, I stopped to get my breath after a long gallop on my cob. I was on a wide heath overlooking the valley that ends at the red spires of Dorking. A silvery river, whose name I forget, and a sprinkling of pools set patches of sky in the vast stretch of flowering green. At the horizon a tower is seen, famous in the district, a memorial of the whimsey of a pious personage, who had himself buried there head downward so as to find himself standing upright on the day of the resurrection, when, it seems, the world will be upside down.

"I stood wondering at this ingenuous monument of human simplicity, when I heard behind me the noise of frantic galloping. Before I could move or cry out, a hunter and a maddened horse burst from the wood, within gunshot, and plunged headlong down the steep bank that ended abruptly at the gaping pit of an old quarry. What filled me with unspeakable horror was that the rider was desperately spurring and lashing his horse, who would have been unable anyhow to stop himself in his dizzy descent toward death. In the twinkling of an eye the ground appeared to swallow them both. Nothing was to be seen but heaven and earth smiling at each other with the imperturbable smile of things that never end.

"I finally regained the use of my senses. I jumped from my saddle, and I know not how, reached the bottom of the quarry. The horse had been killed outright. In a red pool lay a gasping, shattered man. It was an old friend of mine, who had been kind to me in my early days in Dorking. I called him. He opened his eyes.

"'What!' he cried, 'it is not over?'

"I questioned him in vain.

"'It is not over! It is not over!' he repeated in vain despair, 'I shall have to go through with it again!'

"Not knowing what to do or say, I climbed to the top of the bank and called for help. A farmer hastened to the spot. With infinite care, the wounded man was lifted into a cart. By some miracle he had escaped without mortal injury. Two months later he was in full convalescence. He suspected before long that I had witnessed his leap, and my embarrassment when he questioned me about our encounter at the bottom of the quarry only confirmed him in his idea. One day, he could no longer keep from speaking.

"'You do not believe it was an accident, do you?' he said, looking me squarely in the eyes.

"'What do you mean?' I asked, avoiding the question.

"'I mean that I must have passed close by you on my way to the quarry.'

"'Yes,' I said, with a sudden resolve to tell the truth.

"'You know my secret. I am sure, my dear child, that you will keep it. Death would not take me. I shall go on living. But since there is now one human being before whom I can pour out the overflow of my misery, and since that one is yourself, for whom I have so long felt the warmest friendship, I will tell you all.'

"'Some other day. Later on.'

"'No, let me speak. In the first place, let me reassure you, there is no crime in my life.'

"'What an idea!'

"'No, I am merely unhappy. And my unhappiness is of a kind for which there is no help. It seems to you that I have everything, does it not? Wealth, a happy family life, beloved children. My wife, I am sure, seems to you——'

"'The best in the world.'

"'Doubtless. And yet, she exactly is the cause of my wretchedness. She loves me, and I hate her. It is horrible.'

"'Oh, come. You do not hate your wife. That is impossible.'

"'I repeat it. I hate her. I loved her when I married her. I was in love at that time, for she was very beautiful. She has been a faithful wife, and a good mother. What have I to complain of, except that she mechanically has confined herself to the narrow performance of her duties, and while doing it, has allowed us to become strangers? Is she above or beneath me? What does it matter? We are not on the same mental plane. I have by my side an inert, submissive creature, with an exasperating sorrow in her eyes, for although she has never formulated any complaint, she naturally holds me responsible for the misunderstanding which has never been expressed in words. You look at me as if you did not understand. You think me mad, probably. Shall I be more explicit? Very well, I no longer love her. There you have it in a nutshell. Gradually, habit and her flatly commonplace mind made her indifferent to me. There is no sense in blaming her. Be the fault hers or mine, I was estranged from her. What remedy was there for the brutal fact? I had loved her, and I loved her no longer. We cannot love by order of the sheriff or of the Bible. It is as if you should reproach me with having white hair instead of blond, as I once had. What have you to say to it?'

"'Nothing at all, my dear and unhappy friend. If you wish me to speak frankly, the idea had occurred to me that the lack of pleasure you took in your excellent wife might come from the possibly unconscious pleasure you took in someone else.'

"'Your imagination anticipates the facts. As you suspect, I have not finished my story. Since you call for an immediate confession, let me tell you, that having been strictly brought up in the discipline of the Church, I came to marriage with the perfect purity required by Christian morality. Let me also tell you that, for whatever reason you choose—ignorance of the strategy of intrigue, or timidity, or fear of losing my self-respect—I have remained guiltless of the least departure from the strictest marriage laws. I no longer loved my wife, but I was her husband, her faithful husband. You will readily guess at the wretched lapses into weakness confessed in that statement, followed by a reaction of shame, and even of repulsion, which in spite of my best efforts I could not disguise.

"'I thought of going on a long journey. A year or two in India might, or so I supposed, have brought me back to the woman from whom proximity was daily separating me more widely. But she, not understanding this, raised the most serious of all objections: the children needed my oversight.

"'Take us with you,' she stupidly suggested.

"'The die was cast. We remained where we were: chained together, each horribly distressing the other, and, with each spasm of pain, deepening our own hurt and that of our companion in irons. She, unfailingly angelic, and I, unbalanced, full of whims, and doubtless unbearable. Who knows? If it had been possible to her nature, a clap of thunder might have scattered the contrary electric currents between us, and have restored peace. But no. We were enemies always on the point of grappling, with never the relief of a word or a gesture of battle. My nerves were on the point of giving way, when the inevitable romance came into my life.'

"'You are still far from strong. Do not tell me any more to-day.'

"'Nay, chance has forced this confession. Let us go through with it to the end. After this, we will never refer to it again. The romance you have guessed at was connected with a lovable and light-hearted girl. She was a little intoxicated with her own youth, and full of the exquisite charm which illusion had once lent to the woman I married, and in which she was to me so lamentably lacking now. What shall I say? I loved and was loved. Our passion was an ideal one, very sweet, very pure, carrying with it no remorse. Were I to tell you the story of it, it might even seem childish to you. It contained, however, the two happiest years of my life. Two years that passed like a flash. Two years of silent delight, ending one day in a definite avowal. No sooner had we uttered the words, than fear of the sin we glimpsed assailed us, and we fell back aghast into the depths of despair. Our only kiss was the kiss of eternal farewell.

"'I was left more broken and bleeding by the horrible fall than when you found me on the stones of the quarry. She went away, and if I am to tell the whole miserable truth, she has found comfort, she is married to a boor, who, they say, makes her happy. Why should I care to appear better than I am? I often regret the imbecile heroism prompting me, when to save that shallow creature I made myself into the victim of an atrocious fate. I spared her, and consequently am dying, while she, in the arms of her hod carrier——Do not misjudge me. I have suffered. She had sworn to love me forever. She is happy, and I—I who could have taken her and broken her and made of the eventual harm to her an overwhelming joy, while it lasted, have not even the right to proclaim her unworthy of my foolish pity. I curse her, and I love her still.

"'And my wife, my blameless wife, who guessed everything, I am sure, and forgave it, either from incapacity to resent an outrage, or from insulting pity for me, my wife to whom I owe this double disillusion in love, who unwittingly tortures me, and whom I equally torture, I execrate her, I hate her with all the intensity of my misery. Had I yielded to the moment's temptation I might have returned to her sated with happiness, or disenchanted, or remorseful.

"'In my deepest misery I shall never forgive her the look of silent anguish wherewith she stabs me. I shall never forgive her resignation, the quiet submission which, together with her interest in her duties, makes our tormented life bearable to her. She is not unaware, you may be sure, that I have a hundred times thought of seeking oblivion in death. She was no more taken in than you were by the accident on Dunley Hill. She will never betray it by a word. She offers herself as a sacrifice, and this magnanimity which fills me with despair constantly aggravates the intolerable anguish of our daily association. I no longer love the woman who loves me; I still love the one who loves me no longer. I have committed no sin, I am even blameless. Will you deny that if I had given myself cause for remorse I might also have suffered less, might have even had chances of happiness?'"

With a far-away look in her eyes, the narrator ended her story abruptly.

"And what did you answer?" I questioned.

"I answered that pain wears itself out no less than joy, that it is our nature to regret the things that might have been, because they are so different from reality. I answered that patience to live is the greatest among the virtues."