* * * * *
The painter has gone. It is a hazardous thing to do, but I risk it.
I go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask Wanda “Do you love the
painter, mistress?”
She looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally
even smiles.
“I feel sorry for him,” she replies, “but I do not love him. I love no
one. _I used to love you, as ardently, as passionately, as deeply as
it was possible for me to love,_ but now I don’t love even you any
more; my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.”
“Wanda!” I exclaimed, deeply moved.
“Soon, you too will no longer love me,” she continued, “tell me when
you have reached that point, and I will give back to you your
freedom.”
“Then I shall remain your slave, all my life long, for I adore you
and shall always adore you,” I cried, seized by that fanaticism of
love which has repeatedly been so fatal to me.
Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. “Consider well what you
do,” she said. “I have loved you infinitely and have been despotic
towards you so that I might fulfil your dream. Something of my old
feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my
breast. When that too has gone who knows whether then I shall give
you your liberty; whether I shall not then become really cruel,
merciless, even brutal toward; whether I shall not take a diabolical
pleasure in tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships
me idolatrously, the while I remain indifferent or love someone else;
perhaps, I shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. Consider
this well.”
“I have long since considered all that,” I replied as in a glow of
fever. “I cannot exist, cannot live without you; I shall die if you
set me at liberty; let me remain your slave, kill me, but do not
drive me away.”
“Very well then, be my slave,” she replied, “but don’t forget that
I no longer love you, and your love doesn’t mean any more to me than
a dog’s, and dogs are kicked.”
