'
'Shall we be happy? I wonder. We have both suffered,' she said, 'we are
both tired of suffering, and it is only right that we should be happy.'
'Yes, we shall be happy, I will be happy. It shall be my pleasure to attend
to you, to give you all your desire. But you said just now that you had
suffered. I have told you my past. Tell me yours. I know nothing except
that you were unhappily married.'
'There is little else to know; a woman's life is not adventurous, like a
man's. I have not known the excitement of "first nights," nor the striving
and the craving for an artistic ideal. My life has been essentially a
woman's life,--suppression of self and monotonous duty, varied by
heart-breaking misfortune. I married when I was very young; before I had
even begun to think about life I found---- But why distress these hours
with painful memories?'
'It is pleasant to look back on the troubles we have passed through.'
'Well, I learnt in one year the meaning of three terrible words--poverty,
neglect, and cruelty. In the second year of my marriage my husband died of
drink, and I was left a widow at twenty, entirely penniless. I went to live
with my sister, and she was so poor that I had to support myself by giving
music-lessons.
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