It was as though she was now really mine, and
would ever remain mine.
I showed Lucia the message, thereby explaining my sad and introspective
mood. She willingly forgave me and did not ask me more than I wished to
tell, just as she had always met me with the utmost discretion in my,
to her inexplainable, humors.
But if perchance she had hoped that my heart would now feel itself
free, that my entire love would now be bestowed on her, she was
miserably deceived. The effect was exactly the reverse. I only now
fully realized what I had done, and only now felt it as a great wrong.
I felt that I had a wife, but it was not the one who slept by my side
and who bore my name. A fervent passionate desire went out toward the
being whose fair image I had seen so clearly, whom I had wished to
embrace with unutterable tenderness, and whose voice and whose presence
had procured for me bliss such as the day had never brought me, and the
clear, cold daylight could not dispel. I longed for the night all day
long, - and with bitter certainty I felt that I should never be able to
offer more to the poor woman, whom I had taken into my arms as my wife,
than a friendly mask, an assumed appearance of loyalty and tenderness.
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