Madame Chantal and her daughters rushed to her, and, as they went for
water and a napkin and vinegar, I got my hat and escaped.
I hurried away, my heart torn, my mind full of remorse and regret.
And yet now and again I was glad; I felt as if I had done something
commendable and necessary.
I kept asking myself, “Was I wrong? Was I right?” They had that in
their souls like a bullet in a healed-up wound. Will they not be
happier now? It was too late to renew their torture, and not too late
for them to remember with fondness.
And perhaps some evening next spring, moved by a moonbeam falling
through the branches on the grass at their feet, they will take each
other’s hands and clasp them in memory of all that suppressed cruel
suffering; and perhaps, too, that brief clasp will send through their
veins a little of that thrill which otherwise they would never have
known, and will excite in those dead ones, resuscitated in an instant,
the swift, divine sensation of that intoxication, that madness, which
gives lovers more happiness in one thrill than other men can gather in
a lifetime.