Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part IV - V
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280 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
She thanked me on the following morning for having
awakened her from her nightmare. I made much of her,
and begged her to tell me, her best friend, everything.
"Tell you what? ... I have nothing to tell."
I should have given her absolution for whatever crime
she had confessed to me at that moment, for my heart
was full of compassion. I loved her with an infinite love,
despite of, or perhaps because of, all the misery she had
wrought. She was but an unhappy woman. How could
I raise my hand against her ?
But instead of delivering me once and for all from the
terrible doubts which haunted me, she offered me the
most strenuous resistance. She had persuaded herself
that I was insane ; her instinct of self-preservation had
built up a legend behind which she could shield herself
from the attacks of her anguished conscience.
Sunwards.
Not a single ray of sunlight had gladdened the little
village of Gersau on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne
for three long weeks, not, in fact, since the beginning
of October, Avhen the Foehn began to blow. There had
been a dead calm ; after sunset I had fallen asleep and
slept until I was awakened, in the middle of the night,
by the ringing of the church bells and a noise which
mingled with the peculiar rushing sound of the tempest
as it came sweeping across the Alps, flung itself on the
southern shore of the lake, was compressed into the valley
and forced into the streets of our village, where it tore
at the signs, shook the window shutters, rattled the
slates and howled through the branches of trees and
shrubs.
The waves of the lake dashed against the dam, foamed
over the border and plashed against the sides of the
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