Austria -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
She went over the events of the previous evening in her mind, and she
asked herself what could she have said or done to put him out of humour
or disappoint him.... Really, it had all been so beautiful, and Emil had
seemed so happy, just as happy as she had been ... was all that going to
prove to have been a lie too?... How could she tell?... Perhaps, after
all, she had put him out of humour without being aware that she was doing
so.... She had, indeed, been nothing more or less than a good woman all
her life.... Who could say whether she had not been guilty of something
clumsy or stupid?... whether she had not been ludicrous and repellent in
some moment when she had believed herself to be sacrificing, tender,
enchanted and enchanting?... But what did she know of all these
things?... And, all at once, she felt something almost in the nature of
repentance that she had set out upon her adventure so utterly
unprepared, that, until the previous day, she had been so chaste and
good, that she had not had other lovers before Emil.... Then she
remembered, too, that he had evaded her shy questions and requests on the
subject of his violin playing, as if he had not wanted to admit her into
that sphere of his life. He had thus remained strange to her,
intentionally strange, so far as concerned the very things which were of
the deepest and most vital importance to him. All at once she realized
that she had no more in common with him than the pleasures of a night,
and that the present morning had found them both as far apart from one
another as they had been during all the years in which they had each led
a separate existence.
And then jealousy again flared up within her.... But she felt as though
she was always thus, as though every conceivable emotion had always been
present within her ... love and distrust, and hope and penitence, and
yearning and jealousy ... and, for the first time in her life, she was so
stirred, even to the very depths of her soul, that she understood those
who in their despair have hurled themselves out of a window to meet their
death.... And she perceived that the present state of affairs was
impossible, that only certainty could be of any avail to her.... She must
go to him and ask him ... but she must ask in the manner of one who is
holding a knife to another's breast....
She hurried away through the streets, which were almost deserted, as
though all Vienna had gone off into the country.... But would she find
him at home?... Would he not, perhaps, have had a presentiment that
the idea might come to her to seek him, to take him to task, and would he
not have taken steps to evade the chance of such an occurrence?... She
was ashamed of having had to think of that, too.... And if he was at
home would she find him alone?... And if he was not alone, would she
be admitted into his house?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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