This sort of talk, by no means strange on the old lady's part,
sometimes tempted Isoult to tell her story--that she was a wife
already. No doubt she would have done it had not a thought forborne
her. Prosper did not love her; their relations were not marital--so
much she knew as well as anybody. She would never confess her love for
him, even to Prosper himself; she could not bring herself to own that
she loved and was unloved. She thought that was a disgrace, one that
would flood her with shame and Prosper with her, as her husband though
only in name. She thought that she would rather die than utter this
secret of hers; she believed indeed that she soon would die. That was
why she never told the Abbess, and again why she made no effort nor
had any temptation to run away and find him out. It seemed to her that
her mere appearance before him would be a confession of deep shame.
But she never ceased for an hour to think of him, poor miserable. In
bed she would lie for whole watches awake, calling his name over and
over again in a whisper. Her ring grew to be a familiar, Prosper's
genius. She would take it from her bosom and hold it to her lips,
whisper broken words to it, as if she were in her husband's arms. With
the same fancy she would try to make it understand how she loved him.
That is a thing very few girls so much as know, and still fewer can
utter even to their own hearts; and so it proved with her. She was as
mute and shamefaced before the ring as before the master of the ring.
So she would sigh, put it back in its nest, and hide her face in the
pillow to cool her cheeks. At last in tears she would fall asleep. So
the days dragged.
In February, when the light drew out, when there was a smell of wet
woods in the air, when birds sang again in the brakes, and here and
there the bushes facing south budded, matters grew worse for her. She
began to be very heavy, her nightly vigils began to tell. She could
not work so well, she lagged in her movements, fell into stares and
woke with starts, blundered occasionally. She had never been a
fanciful girl, having no nurture for such flowering; but now her
visions began to be distorted. Her love became her thorn, her side one
deep wound. More and more of the night was consumed in watchings; she
cried easily and often (for any reason or no reason), and she was apt
to fall faint. So February came and went in storms, and March brought
open weather, warm winds, a carpet of flowers to the woods. This
enervated, and so aggravated her malady: the girl began to droop and
lose her good looks. In turn the Abbess, who was really fond of her,
became alarmed. She thought she was ill, and made a great pet of her.
She got no better.