THE AMERICAN
I can't tell you—I can't! It's cruel of you to insist. I don't see why I should n't ask you to believe me and pity me. It's like a religion. There's a curse upon the house; I don't know what—I don't know why—don't ask me. We must all bear it. I've been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered me a great chance—besides my liking you. I liked you more than I ever liked any one," she insisted to him with a beauty and purity of clearness, and yet with the sad fallacy of thinking, apparently, that she made the case less tragic for him by making it more tragic for herself. "It seemed good to change completely, to break, to go away. And then I admired you, I admired you," she so nobly and decently repeated. "But I can't—it has overtaken and come back to me." Her self-control had now completely abandoned her, and her words were broken with long sobs. "Why do such dreadful things happen to us—why is my brother Valentin killed, like a beast, in the beauty of his youth and his gaiety and his brightness and all that we loved him for? Why are there things I can't ask about—that I'm afraid, for my life, to know? Why are there places I can't look at, sounds I can't hear? Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case so hard and so terrible as this? I'm not meant for that—I 'm not made for boldness and defiance. I was made to be happy in a quiet natural way." At this Newman gave a most expressive groan, but she quavered heartbreakingly on: "I was made to do gladly and gratefully what's expected of me. My mother has always been very good to me; that's all I can say. I must n't judge her; I must n't criticise
416
