It
matters very little. She is gone. That is the one awful fact
that signifies. No explanations, pleas for forgiveness could
make me suffer less. Were she different I might find it in my
heart to hate her. This I cannot do. How can one hate a thing
devoid of heart and soul? But one can love it--God knows how
blindly. So I have locked the door of Carlotta's room and the
key is in my possession. It shall not be touched. It shall
remain just as she left it--and I shall mourn for her as for one
dead.
For Pasquale--if I were of his own reversionary type, I should
follow him half across Europe till we met, and then one of us
would kill the other. In one respect he resembles Carlotta. He
is destitute of the moral sense. How else to solve the enigma?
How else to reconcile his flamboyant chivalry towards the
consumptive washer-woman with the black treachery towards me, in
which even at that very moment his mind must have been steeped?
I knew that he had betrayed many, that where women were concerned
no considerations of honour or friendship had stood between him
and his desires; but I believed--for what reason save my own
egregious vanity, I know not--that for me he had a peculiar
regard.
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