"Severin," she continued softly, "what is the matter? Are you ill?"

Her voice sounded so sympathetic, so kind, so full of love, that it clutched my breast like red-hot tongs and I began to sob aloud.

"Severin," she began anew. "My poor unhappy friend." Her hand gently stroked my hair. "I am sorry, very sorry for you; but I can't help you; with the best intention in the world I know of nothing that would cure you."

"Oh, Wanda, must it be?" I moaned in my agony.

"What, Severin? What are you talking about?"

"Don't you love me any more?" I continued. "Haven't you even a little bit of pity for me? Has the beautiful stranger taken complete possession of you?"

"I cannot lie," she replied softly after a short pause. "He has made an impression on me which I haven't yet been able to a.n.a.lyse, further than that I suffer and tremble beneath it. It is an impression of the sort I have met with in the works of poets or on the stage, but I always thought it was a figment of the imagination. Oh, he is a man like a lion, strong and beautiful and yet gentle, not brutal like the men of our northern world. I am sorry for you, Severin, I am; but I must possess him. What am I saying? I must give myself to him, if he will have me."

"Consider your reputation, Wanda, which so far has remained spotless," I exclaimed, "even if I no longer mean anything to you."

"I am considering it," she replied, "I intend to be strong, as long as it is possible, I want--" she buried her head shyly in the pillows --"I want to become his wife--if he will have me."

"Wanda," I cried, seized again by that mortal fear, which always robs me of my breath, makes me lose possession of myself, "you want to be his wife, belong to him for always. Oh! Do not drive me away!

He does not love you--"

"Who says that?" she exclaimed, flaring up.

"He does not love you," I went on pa.s.sionately, "but I love you, I adore you, I am your slave, I let you tread me underfoot, I want to carry you on my arms through life."

"Who says that he doesn't love me?" she interrupted vehemently.

"Oh! be mine," I replied, "be mine! I cannot exist, cannot live without you. Have mercy on me, Wanda, have mercy!"

She looked at me again, and her face had her cold heartless expression, her evil smile.

"You say he doesn't love me," she said, scornfully. "Very well then, get what consolation you can out of it."

With this she turned over on the other side, and contemptuously showed me her back.

"Good G.o.d, are you a woman without flesh or blood, haven't you a heart as well as I!" I cried, while my breast heaved convulsively.

"You know what I am," she replied, coldly. "I am a woman of stone, _Venus in Furs_, your ideal, kneel down, and pray to me."

"Wanda!" I implored, "mercy!"

She began to laugh. I buried my face in her pillows. Pain had loosened the floodgates of my tears and I let them flow.

For a long time silence reigned, then Wanda slowly raised herself.

"You bore me," she began.

"Wanda!"

"I am tired, let me go to sleep."

"Mercy," I implored. "Do not drive me away. No man, no one, will love you as I do."

"Let me go to sleep,"--she turned her back to me again.

I leaped up, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the poinard, which hung beside her bed, from its sheath, and placed its point against my breast.

"I shall kill myself here before your eyes," I murmured dully.

"Do what you please," Wanda replied with complete indifference. "But let me go to sleep." She yawned aloud. "I am very sleepy."

For a moment I stood as if petrified. Then I began to laugh and cry at the same time. Finally I placed the poinard in my belt, and again fell on my knees before her.

"Wanda, listen to me, only for a few moments," I begged.

"I want to go to sleep! Don't you hear!" she cried, leaping angrily out of bed and pushing me away with her foot. "You forget that I am your mistress?" When I didn't budge, she seized the whip and struck me. I rose; she struck me again--this time right in the face.

"Wretch, slave!"

With clenched fist held heavenward, I left her bedroom with a sudden resolve. She tossed the whip aside, and broke out into clear laughter. I can imagine that my theatrical att.i.tude must have been very droll.

I have determined to set myself free from this heartless woman, who has treated me so cruelly, and is now about to break faith and betray me, as a reward for all my slavish devotion, for everything I have suffered from her. I packed my few belongings into a bundle, and then wrote her as follows:

"Dear Madam,--

I have loved you even to madness, I have given myself to you as no man ever has given himself to a woman. You have abused my most sacred emotions, and played an impudent, frivolous game with me. However, as long as you were merely cruel and merciless, it was still possible for me to love you. Now you are about to become _cheap_. I am no longer the slave whom you can kick about and whip. You yourself have set me free, and I am leaving a woman I can only hate and despise.

Severin Kusiemski."

I handed these lines to the negress, and hastened away as fast as I could go. I arrived at the railway-station all out of breath.

Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my heart and stopped. I began to weep. It is humiliating that I want to flee and I can't. I turn back-- whither?--to her, whom I abhor, and yet, at the same time, adore.

Again I pause. I cannot go back. I dare not.

But how am I to leave Florence. I remember that I haven't any money, not a penny. Very well then, on foot; it is better to be an honest beggar than to eat the bread of a courtesan.

But still I can't leave.

She has my pledge, my word of honor. I have to return. Perhaps she will release me.

After a few rapid strides, I stop again.

She has my word of honor and my bond, that I shall remain her slave as long as she desires, until she herself gives me my freedom. But I might kill myself.

I go through the Cascine down to the Arno, where its yellow waters plash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. There I sit, and cast up my final accounts with existence. I let my entire life pa.s.s before me in review. On the whole, it is rather a wretched affair--a few joys, an endless number of indifferent and worthless things, and between these an abundant harvest of pains, miseries, fears, disappointments, shipwrecked hopes, afflictions, sorrow and grief.

I thought of my mother, whom I loved so deeply and whom I had to watch waste away beneath a horrible disease; of my brother, who full of the promise of joy and happiness died in the flower of youth, without even having put his lips to the cup of life. I thought of my dead nurse, my childhood playmates, the friends that had striven and studied with me; of all those, covered by the cold, dead, indifferent earth. I thought of my turtle-dove, who not infrequently made his cooing bows to me, instead of to his mate.--All have returned, dust unto dust.