The Forest Lovers

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.