Collected Stories

The Last Kiss
"Forgive me...Forgive me."
His voice was less assured as he replied:
"Get up, dry your eyes. I, too, have a good deal to reproach myself with."
"No, no," she sobbed.
He shook his head.
"I ought never to have left you; you loved me. Just at first after it all happened...when I could still feel the fire of the vitriol burning my face, when I began to realize that I should never see again, that all my life I should be a thing of horror, of Death, certainly I wasn't able to think of it like that. It isn't possible to resign oneself all at once to such a fate...But living in this eternal darkness, a man's thoughts pierce far below the surface and grow quiet like those of a person falling asleep, and gradually calm comes. To-day, no longer able to use my eyes, I see with my imagination. I see again our little house, our peaceful days, and your smile. I see your poor little face the night I said that last good-bye."
"The judge couldn't imagine any of that, could he? And it was only fair to try to explain, for they thought only of your action, the action that made me into...what I am. They were going to send you to prison where you would slowly have faded . . No years of such punishment for you could have given me back my eyes...When you saw me go into the witness-box you were afraid, weren't you? You believed that I would charge you, have you condemned? No, I could never have done that never..."
She was still crying. Her face buried in her hands.