"Madame," I answered, "I think that I owe you no explanations, but I
shall say this: the evil courses that you deplore were adopted, not
vindictively, but in the effort to numb the agony that you had made me
suffer. You but reap as you have sown."
"Reform!" she sobbed. She sank on her knees before me. "Silvestre, in
mercy to us, reform!"
"I will never reform," I said inflexibly. "I will grow more abandoned
day by day--my past faults shall shine as merits compared with the
atrocities that are to come. False girl, monster of selfishness, you
are dragging me to the gutter, and your only grief is that _he_
must share my shame! You have blackened my soul, and you have no regret
but that my iniquities must react on _him!_ By the shock that
stunned him in the first flush of your honeymoon, you know what I
experienced when I received the news of your deceit; by the anguish of
repentance that overtakes him after each of his orgies, which revolt
you, you know that I was capable of being a nobler man. The degradation
that you behold is your own work. You have made me bad, and you must
bear the consequences--you cannot make me good now to save your
husband!"
Humbled and despairing, she left me.
I repeat that it is no part of my confession to palliate my guilt. The
sight of her had served merely to inflame my resentment--and it was at
this stage that I began deliberately to contemplate revenge.
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