I was not honest in saying
that; I didn't mean to go back to Venice or to see you again. I was
running away from you--and I mean to keep on running! If _you_ won't, _I_
must. Somebody must save you from marrying a disappointed woman of--well,
you say years don't count, and why should they, after all, since you are
not to marry me?
That is what I dare not go back to say. _You are not to marry me_. We have
had our month together in Venice (such a good month, was it not?) and now
you are to go home and write a book--any book but the one we--didn't talk
of!--and I am to stay here, attitudinizing among my memories like a sort
of female Tithonus. The dreariness of this enforced immortality!
But you shall know the truth. I care for you, or at least for your love,
enough to owe you that.
You thought it was because Vincent Rendle had loved me that there was so
little hope for you. I had had what I wanted to the full; wasn't that what
you said? It is just when a man begins to think he understands a woman
that he may be sure he doesn't! It is because Vincent Rendle _didn't love
me_ that there is no hope for you. I never had what I wanted, and never,
never, never will I stoop to wanting anything else.
Do you begin to understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it was
all real as far as it went. You are young--you haven't learned, as you
will later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one's way
through the labyrinth of human nature; but didn't it strike you,
sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about him?
His trick, for instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round between
his thumb and forefinger while he talked; his mania for saving the backs
of notes; his greediness for wild strawberries, the little pungent Alpine
ones; his childish delight in acrobats and jugglers; his way of always
calling me _you--dear you_, every letter began--I never told you a word
of all that, did I? Do you suppose I could have helped telling you, if he
had loved me? These little things would have been mine, then, a part of my
life--of our life--they would have slipped out in spite of me (it's only
your unhappy woman who is always reticent and dignified).
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