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132 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
often anything but spontaneous, for I had come to the
end of my nerve-power ; and she accepted everything,
sucked my brain dry, consumed my heart. In exchange
she looked upon me as a dustbin, into which she threw
all her rubbish, all her grief, all her troubles, all her cares.
In this hell I lived my life, dragged on my misery,
worked for a bare sufficiency. When she came to see me
of an evening and found me working, she sulked ; and it
was not until I had wasted a couple of hours with tears
and kisses that I succeeded in convincing her of my love.
She conceived love as never-ending admiration, a servile
readiness to please, unceasing sacrifice.
I was crushed down by my heavy responsibility. I
could see the moment not very far off when misery, or the
birth of a child, would force me into a premature marriage.
She had claimed but three thousand francs for one year,
with which she intended to defray the costs of her artistic
training. I had no faith in her dramatic career. Her
pronunciation still betrayed her Finnish descent, and her
features were too irregular for the stage. To keep her
from brooding I made her repeat poetry. I constituted
myself her teacher. But she was too much occupied with
her disappointments, and when, after a rehearsal, she had
to admit that her progress was very small, she was
inconsolable.
How dreary our love was ! Instead of being the source
from which flowed strength to cope with our difficulties,
it was a prolonged torture.
Joy was no sooner born than it was slain, and we
parted, dissatisfied, robbed of the greatest happiness life
has to give. A poor phantom was our love !
But my monogamie nature recoiled from change. Our
love, sad as it was, was yet the source from which sprang
exquisite spiritual joys, and my inextinguishable longing
was the guarantee for its endurance.
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