Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part IV - VI
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callous, silent, and received her treacherous kiss without
returning it.
“Say at least that we are parting friends!”
“Enemies for the short time which remains for me
on earth!”
We parted.
The steamer started. I watched her walking along the
quay, trying to draw me back with the magic of her eyes
which had held me under their spell for so many years.
She came and went like a forsaken little dog. I waited
for the moment when she would jump into the water;
I should jump after her, and we should drown together.
But she turned away and disappeared in a little side-street,
leaving me with a last impression of her bewitching figure,
her little feet, which I had allowed to trample on me
for ten years without a murmur. Only in my writings
perhaps I had occasionally given vent to my feelings,
but even there I had always tried to mislead the reader
by concealing her real crimes.
To steel my heart against grief and regret, I went at
once into the saloon. I sat down to dinner, but an
aching lump in my throat compelled me to rise, and I
climbed again on deck.
I watched the green hill gliding past, and thought of
the little white cottage with the green shutters which
crowned it. My children lived there, but the home
was desolate, they were without protection, without
means.... An icy pang shot through my heart.
I was like the cocoon of the silkworm when the great
steam-engine slowly reels off the shining thread. At every
stroke of the piston I grew thinner, and as the thread
lengthened the cold which chilled me increased.
I was like an embryo prematurely detached from the
umbilical cord. What a complete and living organism is
the family! I had thought so at that first divorce, from
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