He was quite
unable to understand how Elena could have committed such a crime; he
denied her all possibility of justification, and rejected the hypothesis
of some secret and dire necessity having driven her to sudden flight. He
could see nothing but the bare brutal fact, its baseness, its
vulgarity--above all its vulgarity, gross, manifest, odious, without one
extenuating circumstance. In short, the whole matter reduced itself to
this: a passion which was apparently sincere, which they had vowed was
profound and inextinguishable, had been broken off for a question of
money, for material interests, for a commercial transaction.
'Oh, you are ungrateful! What do you know of all that has happened, of
all I have suffered!'
Elena's words recurred to him with everything else she had said, from
beginning to end of their interview--her words of fondness, her offer of
sisterly affection, all her sentimental phrases. And he remembered, too,
the tears that had dimmed her eyes, her changes of countenance, her
tremors, her choking voice when she said good-bye, and he laid the roses
in her lap. 'But why had she ever consented to come? Why play this part,
call up all these emotions, arrange this comedy? Why?
By this time he had reached the top of the steps, and found himself in
the deserted piazza. Suddenly the beauty of the night filled him with a
vague but desperate yearning towards some unknown good.
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