Henry Handel Richardson

“ Madeleine was returning at two o’clock to relieve the nurse.
“You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether,” she reproved Maurice. “And it won’t mend matters in the least. Go home and settle down to work, like a sensible fellow.”
He tried to follow Madeleine’s advice. But it was of no use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. ”

“ Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low American rocking-chair, where she crouched despondently.
“I wish I had died,” she said in a toneless voice.
Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled the tea-cups. “Nonsense! You mustn’t talk about dying—now that you are nearly well again. Besides, you know, such things are easily said. One doesn’t mean them.” ”

“ More than once, of late, Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly out of temper.
“Louise rubs me up the wrong way,” she complained to Maurice. “And she isn’t in the least grateful for all I’ve done for her. I really think she prefers having the nurse about her to me.”
“Sick people often have such fancies,” he consoled her.
“Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have never got on well for long together.”
But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and threw it on the piano, with a decisive haste that was characteristic of her in anger. ”

“ Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don’t you know?—and ruffle the necessary artistic composure.” She laughed scornfully. “However, I’m glad to say, he didn’t escape scot-free after all. Everything went well till yesterday afternoon, when Louise, who was as unsuspecting as a child, heard of it from some one—they say it was Krafft. Without thinking twice—you know her . . . or rather you don’t—she went straight to Schilsky and confronted him. ”

“ She rose from her chair, and leaned on it, half turning her back to Madeleine, and holding her handkerchief to her lips.
Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. “Do you think I should say it, if it weren’t?” she asked. “I don’t invent scandal. And you are bound to hear it when you go out again. He did this, and worse than I choose to tell you, and if you felt as you ought to about it, you would never give him another thought. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth any respectable person’s——”
“Respectable!” burst in Louise, and raised two blazing eyes to her companion’s face. ”

“ Madeleine paled, then went scarlet. “That’s a direct untruth. You!—and not to egg a man on, if you see he admires you! You know every time a passer-by looks at you in the street. You feed on such looks—yes, and return them, too. I have seen you, my lady, looking and being looked at, by a stranger, in a way no decent woman allows.—For the rest, I’ll trouble you to mind your own business. ”

“ No, it’s your nature—your cold, narrow, egotistic nature—which only lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls away. ”

“ As I say, she knows no bounds, and has never learnt self-restraint. It has always been all or nothing with her. And this I must say: however foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she was devoted to Schilsky, and sacrificed everything—work, money and friends—to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is a moral judgment on her. Excess of any kind brings its own punishment with it. ”

“ When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for bread and sausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only when she sat down, with her cup before her, did he get a chance to say: “What is it, Madeleine? Is she very ill?”
Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, she is ill enough. It’s not easy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor is to see her again this evening. And I found a nurse.” ”

“ He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. Furst received him with open arms, and no allusion was made to the night in the BRUHL. With the cessation of his anxiety, a feeling of benevolence towards other people awakened in him, and when, one afternoon, Schwarz asked the assembled class if no one knew what had become of Krafft, whether he was ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice who volunteered to find out. ”

“ That a woman can so far lose her pride as to——”
“Oh, other women do it in other ways. Do you think I haven’t seen how you have been trying to make some one here like you?—doing your utmost, without any thoughts of pride or self-respect.—And how you have failed? ”