Chapter 12 - Page 2

anguish. Probably her tortured nerves had suggested to her the truth
about the baseness of our relations, but she found no words in which to
say it. I began to question her; she answered that she missed her absent
mother. It seemed to me that she was not telling the truth. I sought to
console her by maintaining silence in regard to her parents. I did not
imagine that she felt herself simply overwhelmed, and that her parents
had nothing to do with her sorrow. She did not listen to me, and I
accused her of caprice. I began to laugh at her gently. She dried her
tears, and began to reproach me, in hard and wounding terms, for my
selfishness and cruelty.

"I looked at her. Her whole face expressed hatred, and hatred of me. I
cannot describe to you the fright which this sight gave me. 'How? What?'
thought I, 'love is the unity of souls, and here she hates me? Me? Why?
But it is impossible! It is no longer she!'

"I tried to calm her. I came in conflict with an immovable and cold
hostility, so that, having no time to reflect, I was seized with keen
irritation. We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this
first quarrel was terrible. I say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It
was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug between us. Love
was exhausted with the satisfaction of sensuality. We stood face to
face in our true light, like two egoists trying to procure the greatest
possible enjoyment, like two individuals trying to mutually exploit each
other.

"So what I called our quarrel was our actual situation as it appeared
after the satisfaction of sensual desire. I did not realize that this
cold hostility was our normal state, and that this first quarrel would
soon be drowned under a new flood of the intensest sensuality. I thought
that we had disputed with each other, and had become reconciled, and
that it would not happen again. But in this same honeymoon there came a
period of satiety, in which we ceased to be necessary to each other, and
a new quarrel broke out.

"It became evident that the first was not a matter of chance. 'It was
inevitable,' I thought. This second quarrel stupefied me the more,
because it was based on an extremely unjust cause. It was something like
a question of money,--and never had I haggled on that score; it was even
impossible that I should do so in relation to her. I only remember that,
in answer to some remark that I made, she insinuated that it was my
intention to rule her by means of money, and that it was upon money
that I based my sole right over her. In short, something extraordinarily
stupid and base, which was neither in my character nor in hers.

"I was beside myself. I accused her of indelicacy. She made the