And you'll understand me no better now. I resent the
way the world forgets him. There seems nothing of him left. My
little girl is all Gaston; she lives with Gastons, she has the
Gaston face and the Gaston ways. She's not a bit Quisante; she's
nothing of him, nothing that he has left behind. If we'd had a son,
a boy like him, I might feel differently. But, as it is, what's
left? Only me. I am left, and I am not altogether a Gaston now,
though it's the Gaston and nothing else that you like. No, I'm not
all Gaston now. I've become Quisante in part--not in every way, or I
shouldn't have felt as I did when I found the Professor's report.
But he has laid hold of me, and he doesn't let go. I can't help
thinking that he needn't have died except on my account. You feel
sore that I don't love you, not as you want me to. He was sore too
because I didn't love him; and since he couldn't make me love him,
he had to make me wonder at him; he was doing that when he died. So
I feel that I can't do anything to blot him out, and that I must
stay Quisante, somebody bearing his name, representing him, keeping
him in a way alive, being still his and not anybody else's.
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