She loved Vardri, or imagined that she did. Emile told himself
savagely that he was a fool who deserved no pity, for he had had his
own chance and missed it. He had been with her by night and day, and
her life had been in his own hands all these months, but he had never
made love to her. He had only bullied her, taught her, made her work,
looked after her clothes and food, and, he knew it now too late, loved
her.
She had never suspected it, and the secret should remain his own. Love
and love-making were two very different things. She did not know that
now, but later on she would, when she was ten years older, perhaps, and
then it would not matter to him, for he would be under two or three
feet of snow in a Siberian convict settlement.
He had gone about persuading himself that she was still a child, and
this Austrian boy, this wastrel and dreamer, had awakened her.
It was no use wasting time in sentiment and regrets. _A la Guerre,
comme a la Guerre_. The episode was finished.
He would have work enough to divert his mind soon.
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