What could the reason be? A crime? That
was out of the question. What else could there be but a love affair, and
that had my entire sympathy. It was well known that Goldschmidt admired
a very beautiful woman, who was watched the more jealously by her
husband, because the latter had for a great number of years been
paralysed. He would not allow her to go to the theatre to sit anywhere
but in the mirror box [Footnote: The mirror box was a box in the first
Royal Theatre, surrounded by mirrors and with a grating in front, where
the stage could be seen, reflected in the mirrors, but the occupants
were invisible. It was originally constructed to utilise a space whence
the performance could not otherwise be seen, and was generally occupied
by actresses, etc.], where she could not be seen by the public. The
husband met with no sympathy from the public; he had always been a
characterless and sterile writer, had published only two books, written
in a diametrically opposite spirit, flatly contradicting one another. As
long as he was able to go out he had dyed his red hair black. He was an
insignificant man in every way, and by his first marriage with an ugly
old maid had acquired the fortune which alone had enabled him to pay
court to the beautiful woman he subsequently won.
It had leaked out that she was the original of the beautiful woman in
The Inheritance, and that some of the letters that occur in it were
really notes from Goldschmidt to her.
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