1

Cecile did not go out for a few days; she saw nobody. One morning she received a note; it ran:

“Mevrouw,

“I do not know if you were offended by my mystical utterances. I cannot recall distinctly what I said, but I remember that you told me that I was going too far. I trust that you did not take my indiscretion amiss.

“It would be a great pleasure to me to come to see you. May I hope that you will permit me to call on you this afternoon?

“With most respectful regards,

“Quaerts.”

[111]

As the bearer was waiting for a reply, she wrote back in answer:

“Dear Sir,

“I shall be very pleased to see you this afternoon.

“Cecile van Even.”

When she was alone, she read his note over and over again; she looked at the paper with a smile, looked at the handwriting:

“How strange,” she thought. “This note ... and everything that happens. How strange everything is, everything, everything!”

She remained dreaming a long time, with the note in her hand. Then she carefully folded it up, rose, walked up and down the room, sought with her dainty fingers in a bowl full of visiting-cards, taking out two which she looked at for some time. [112]“Quaerts.” The name sounded differently from before.... How strange it all was! Finally she locked away the note and the two cards in a little empty drawer of her writing-table.

She stayed at home and sent the children out with the nurse. She hoped that no one else would call, neither Mrs. Hoze nor the Van Attemas. And, staring before her, she reflected for a long, long while. There was so much that she did not understand: properly speaking, she understood nothing. So far as she was concerned, she had fallen in love with him: there was no analysing that; it must simply be accepted. But he, what did he feel, what were his emotions?

Her earlier aversion? Sport: he was fond of sport she remembered.... His visit, which was an impertinence: he seemed now to be wishing to atone for it, not to repeat his call without her permission.... [113]His mystical conversation at the dinner-party.... And Mrs. Hijdrecht....

“How strange he is!” she reflected. “I do not understand him; but I love him, I cannot help it. Love, love: how strange that it should exist! I never realized that it existed! I am no longer myself; I am becoming some one else!... What does he want to see me for?... And how singular: I have been married, I have two children! How singular that I should have two children! I feel as if I had none. And yet I am so fond of my little boys! But the other thing is so beautiful, so bright, so transparent, as if that alone were truth. Perhaps love is the only truth.... It is as if everything in and about me were turning to crystal!”

She looked around her, surprised and troubled that her surroundings should have remained the same: the rosewood furniture, [114]the folds of the curtains, the withered landscape of the Scheveningen Road outside. But it was snowing, silently and softly, with great snow-flakes falling heavily, as though they meant to purify the world. The snow was fresh and new, but yet the snow was not real nature to her, who always saw her distant landscape, like a fata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.
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2

He came at four o’clock. She saw him for the first time since the self-revelation which had flashed upon her astounded senses. And when he came she felt the singularly rapturous feeling that in her eyes he was a demigod, that he perfected himself in her imagination, that everything in him was good. Now that he sat there before her, she saw him for the first time and she saw that he was physically [115]beautiful. The strength of his body was exalted into the strength of a young god, broad and yet slender, sinewed as with the marble sinews of a statue; and all this seemed so strange beneath the modernity of his morning coat.

She saw his face completely for the first time. The cut of it was Roman, the head that of a Roman emperor, with its sensual profile, its small, full mouth, living red under the brown gold of his curly moustache. The forehead was low, the hair cut very close, like an enveloping black casque; and over that forehead, with its single furrow, hovered sadness, like a mist of age, strangely contradicting the wanton youthfulness of his mouth and chin. And then his eyes, which she already knew, his eyes of mystery, small and deep-set, with the depth of their pupils, which seemed now to veil themselves and then again to look out. [116]

But the strangest thing was that from all his beauty, from all his being, from all his attitude, as he sat there with his hands folded between his knees, a magnetism emanated, dominating her, drawing her irresistibly towards him, as though she had suddenly, from the first moment of her self-revelation, become his, to serve him in all things. She felt this magnetism attracting her so violently that every power in her melted into listlessness and weakness. A weakness as if he might take her and carry her away, anywhere, wherever he pleased; a weakness as if she no longer possessed her own thoughts, as if she had become nothing, apart from him.

She felt this intensely; and then, then came the very strangest thing of all, as he continued to sit there, at a respectful distance, his eyes looking up to her in reverence, his voice falling in reverential accents. This was the very strangest thing [117]of all that she saw him beneath her, while she felt him above her; that she wished to be his inferior and that he seemed to consider her higher than himself. She did not know how she suddenly came to realize this so intensely, but she did realize it; and it was the first pain that her love gave her.

“It is very kind of you not to be angry with me,” he began.

There was often something caressing in his voice; it was not clear and was even now and then a little broken, but this just gave it a certain charm of quality.

“Why?” she asked.

“In the first place, I did wrong to pay you that visit. In the second place, I was ill-mannered at Mrs. Hoze’s dinner.”

“A whole catalogue of sins!” she laughed.

“Surely!” he continued. “And you are very good to bear me no malice.” [118]

“Perhaps that is because I always hear so much good about you at Dolf’s.”

“Have you never noticed anything odd in Dolf?” he asked.

“No. What do you mean?”

“Has it never struck you that he has more of an eye for the great aggregate of political problems as a whole than for the details of his own surroundings?”

She looked at him, with a smile of surprise:

“Yes,” she said. “You are quite right. You know him well.”

“Oh, we have known one another from boyhood! It is curious: he never sees the things that lie close to his hand; he does not penetrate them. He is intellectually far-sighted.”

“Yes,” she assented.

“He does not know his wife, nor his daughters, nor Jules. He does not see what they have in them. He identifies [119]each of them by means of an image which he fixes in his mind; and he forms these images out of two prominent characteristics, which are generally a little opposed. Mrs. van Attema appears to him a woman with a heart of gold, but not very practical: so much for her; Jules, a musical genius, but an untractable boy: that settles him!”

“Yes, he does not go very deeply into character,” she said. “For there is a great deal more in Amélie....”

“And he is quite wrong about Jules,” said Quaerts. “Jules is thoroughly tractable and anything but a genius. Jules is nothing more than an exceedingly receptive boy, with a little rudimentary talent. And you ... he misconceives you too!”

“Me?”

“Entirely! Do you know what he thinks of you?” [120]

“No.”

“He thinks you—let me begin by telling you this—very, very lovable and a dear little mother to your boys. But he thinks also that you are incapable of growing very fond of any one; he looks upon you as a woman without passion and melancholy for no reason, except that you are bored. He thinks you bore yourself!”

She looked at him in utter dismay and saw him laughing mischievously.

“I am never bored!” she said, joining in his laughter, with full conviction.

“No, of course you’re not!” he replied.

“How can you know?” she asked.

“I feel it!” he answered. “And, what is more, I know that the basis of your character is not melancholy, not dark, but, on the contrary, very light.”

“I am not so sure of that myself,” she scarcely murmured, slackly, with that weakness within her, but happy that he [121]should estimate her so exactly. “And do you too,” she continued, airily, “think me incapable of loving any one very much?”

“Now that is a matter of which I am not competent to judge,” he said, with such frankness that his whole countenance suddenly grew younger and the crease disappeared from his forehead. “How can I tell?”

“You seem to know a great deal about me otherwise,” she laughed.

“I have seen you so often.”

“Barely four times!”

“That is very often.”

She laughed brightly:

“Is this a compliment?”

“It is meant for one,” he replied. “You do not know how much it means to me to see you.”

It meant much to him to see her! And she felt herself so small, so weak; and him so great, so perfect. With what decision [122]he spoke, how certain he seemed of it all! It almost saddened her that it meant so much to him to see her once in a while. He placed her too high; she did not wish to be placed so high.

And that delicate, fragile something hung between them again, as it had hung between them at the dinner. Then it had been broken by one ill-chosen word. Oh, that it might not be broken now!

“And now let us talk about yourself!” she said, affecting an airy vivacity. “Do you know that you are taking all sorts of pains to fathom me and that I know nothing whatever about you? That’s not fair.”

“If you knew how much I have given you already! I give myself to you entirely; from others I always conceal myself.”

“Why?”

“Because I am afraid of the others!” [123]

“You ... afraid?”

“Yes. You think that I do not look as if I could feel afraid? I have something....”

He hesitated.

“Well?” she asked.

“I have something that is very dear to me and about which I am very much afraid lest any should touch it.”

“And that is...?”

“My soul. I am not afraid of your touching it, for you would not hurt it. On the contrary, I know that it is very safe with you.”

She would have liked once more, mechanically, to reproach him with his strangeness: she could not. But he guessed her thoughts:

“You think me a very odd person, do you not? But how can I be otherwise with you?”

She felt her love expanding within her [124]heart, widening it to its full capacity within her. Her love was as a domain in which he wandered.

“I do not understand you yet; I do not know you yet!” she said, softly. “I do not see you yet....”

“Would you be in any way interested to know me, to see me?”

“Surely.”

“Let me tell you then; I should like to do so; it would be a great joy to me.”

“I am listening to you most attentively.”

“One question first: you cannot endure people who go in for sport?”

“On the contrary, I like to see the display and development of strength, so long as it is not too near me. Just as I like to hear a storm, when I am safely within doors. And I can even find pleasure in watching acrobats.” [125]

He laughed quietly:

“Nevertheless you held my particular predilection in great aversion?”

“Why should you think that?”

“I felt it.”

“You feel everything,” she said, almost in alarm. “You are a dangerous person.”

“So many think that. Shall I tell you why I believe that you took a special aversion in my case?”

“Yes.”

“Because you did not understand it in me, even though you may have observed that physical exercise is one of my hobbies.”

“I do not understand you at all.”

“I think you are right.... But don’t let me talk about myself like this: I would rather talk of you.”

“And I of you. So be nice to me for [126]the first time in our acquaintance and speak ... of yourself.”

He bowed, with a smile:

“You will not think me tiresome?”

“Not at all. You were telling me of yourself. You were speaking of your love of exercise....”

“Ah, yes!... Can you understand that there are in me two distinct individuals?”

“Two distinct....”

“Yes. My soul, which I regard as my real self; and then ... there remains the other.”

“And what is that other?”

“Something ugly, something common, something grossly primitive. In one word, the brute.”

She shrugged her shoulders lightly:

“How dark you paint yourself. The same thing is more or less true of everybody.” [127]

“Yes, but it troubles me more than I can tell you. I suffer; that brute within me hurts my soul, hurts it even more than the whole world hurts it. Now do you know why I feel such a sense of security when I am with you? It is because I do not feel the brute that is in me.... Let me go on a little longer, let me confess; it does me good to tell you all this. You thought I had only seen you four times? But I used to see you so often formerly, in the theatre, in the street, everywhere. It was always rather strange to me when I saw you in the midst of accidental surroundings. And always, when I looked at you, I felt as if I were being lifted to something more beautiful. I cannot express myself more clearly. There is something in your face, in your eyes, in your movements, I don’t know what, but something better than in other people, something that addressed itself, [128]most eloquently, to my soul only. All this is so subtle and so strange; I can hardly put it more plainly. But you are no doubt once more thinking that I am going too far, are you not? Or that I am raving?”

“Certainly, I should never have thought you such an idealist, such a sensitivist,” said Cecile, softly.

“Have I leave to speak to you like this?”

“Why not?” she asked, to escape the necessity of replying.

“You might perhaps fear that I should compromise you....”

“I do not fear that for an instant!” she replied, haughtily, as in utter contempt of the world.

They were silent for a moment. That delicate, fragile thing, which might so easily break, still hung between them, thin, like a gossamer, lightly joining them together. [129]An atmosphere of embarrassment hovered about them. They felt that the words which had passed between them were full of significance. Cecile waited for him to continue; but, as he was silent, she boldly took up the conversation:

“On the contrary, I value it highly that you have spoken to me like this. You are right: you have indeed given me much of yourself. I want to assure you that whatever you have given me will be quite safe with me. I believe that I understand you better now that I see you better.”

“I want very much to ask you something,” he said, “but I dare not.”

She smiled, to encourage him.

“No, really I dare not,” he repeated.

“Shall I guess?” Cecile asked, jestingly.

“Yes; what do you think it is?”

She glanced round the room until her eye rested on the little table covered with books. [130]

“The loan of Emerson’s essays?” she hazarded.

But Quaerts shook his head and laughed:

“No, thank you,” he said. “I bought the volume long ago. No, no, it is a much greater favour than the loan of a book.”

“Be brave then and ask it,” Cecile went on, still jestingly.

“I dare not,” he said again. “I should not know how to put my request into words.”

She looked at him earnestly, into his eyes, which gazed steadily upon her; and then she said:

“I know what you want to ask me, but I will not say it. You must do that: so seek your words.”

“If you know, will you then permit me to say it?”

“Yes, for, if it is what I think, it is nothing that you are not entitled to ask.” [131]

“And yet it would be a great favour.... But let me warn you beforehand that I look upon myself as some one of a much lower order than you.”

A shadow passed across her face, her mouth had a little contraction of pain and she pressed him, a little unnerved:

“I beg you, ask. Just ask me simply.”

“It is a wish, then, that sympathy might be sealed between you and me. Would you allow me to come to you when I am unhappy? I always feel so happy in your presence, so soothed, so different from the state of ordinary life, for with you I live only my better, my real self: you know what I mean.”

Everything within her again melted into weakness and slackness; he was placing her upon too high a pedestal; she was happy, because of what he asked her, but sad, that he felt himself so much lower than she. [132]

“Very well,” she said, nevertheless, with a clear voice. “It shall be as you wish. Let us seal a bond of sympathy.”

And she gave him her hand, her beautiful, long, white hand, where on one white finger gleamed the sparks of jewels, white and blue. For a second, very reverently, he pressed her finger-tips between his own:

“Thank you,” he said, in a hushed voice, a voice that was a little broken.

“Are you often unhappy?” asked Cecile.

“Always,” he replied, almost humbly and as though embarrassed at having to confess it. “I don’t know why, but it has always been so. And yet from my childhood I have enjoyed much that people call happiness. But yet, yet ... I suffer through myself. It is I who do myself the most hurt. And after that the world ... and I have always to hide myself. To the world, to people generally I [133]only show the individual who rides and fences and hunts, who goes into society and is very dangerous to young married women....”

He laughed with his bad, low laugh, looking aslant into her eyes; she remained calmly gazing at him.

“Beyond that I give them nothing. I hate them; I have nothing in common with them, thank God!”

“You are too proud,” said Cecile. “Each of those people has his own sorrow, just as you have: the one suffers a little more subtly, the other a little more coarsely; but they all suffer. And in that they all resemble yourself.”

“Each taken by himself, perhaps. But that is not how I take them: I take them in the lump and therefore I hate them. Don’t you?”

“No,” she said calmly. “I don’t believe that I am capable of hating.” [134]

“You are very strong within yourself. You suffice unto yourself.”

“No, no, not that, really not; but you ... you are unjust towards the world.”

“Possibly; but why does it always give me pain? Alone with you, I forget that it exists, the outside world. Do you understand now why I was so sorry to see you at Mrs. Hoze’s? You seemed to me to have lowered yourself. And it was because ... because of that special quality which I saw in you that I did not seek your acquaintance earlier. The acquaintance was fatally bound to come; and so I waited....”

Fate? What would it bring her? thought Cecile. But she could not pursue the thought: she seemed to herself to be dreaming of beautiful and subtle things which did not exist for other people, which only floated between them two. And those beautiful things were already [135]there: it was no longer necessary to look upon them as illusions; it was as if she had overtaken the future! For one brief moment only did this happiness endure; then again she felt pain, because of his reverence.
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3

He was gone and she was alone, waiting for the children. She neglected to ring for the lamp to be lighted; and the twilight of the late afternoon darkened into the room. She sat motionless, looking out before her at the leafless trees.

“Why should I not be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then can I not be happy?”

She felt pain; her soul suffered and it seemed to her as if her soul were suffering for the first time, perhaps because now, for [136]the first time, her soul had not been itself but another. It seemed to her as if another woman and not she had spoken to him, to Quaerts, just now. An exalted woman, a woman of illusions; the woman, in fact, whom he saw in her and not the woman that she was, a humble woman, a woman of love. Ah, she had had to restrain herself not to ask him:

“Why do you speak to me like that? Why do you raise up your beautiful thoughts to me? Why do you not rather let them drip down upon me? For see, I do not stand so high as you think; and see, I am at your feet and my eyes seek you above me.”

Ought she to have told him that he was deceiving himself? Ought she to have asked him:

“Why do I lower myself when I mix with other people? What do you see in me after all? Behold, I am only a woman, [137]a woman of weakness and dreams; and I have come to love you, I don’t know why.”

Ought she to have opened his eyes and said to him:

“Look upon your own soul in a mirror; look upon yourself and see how you are a god walking the earth, a god who knows everything because he feels it, who feels everything because he knows it....”

Everything?... No, not everything; for he deceived himself, this god, and thought to find an equal in her, who was but his creature.

Ought she to have declared all this, at the cost of her modesty and his happiness? For his happiness—she felt perfectly assured—lay in seeing her in the way in which he saw her.

“With me he is happy!” she thought. “And sympathy is sealed between us.... It was not friendship, nor did he [138]speak of love; he called it simply sympathy.... With me he feels only his real self and not that other ... the brute that is within him!... The brute!...”

Then there came drifting over her a gloom as of gathering clouds; and she shuddered at something that suddenly rolled through her: a broad stream of blackness, as though its waters were filled with mud, which bubbled up in troubled rings, growing larger and larger. And she took fear before this stream and tried not to see it; but it swallowed up all her landscapes—so bright before, with their luminous horizons—now with a sky of ink smeared above, like a foul night.

“How loftily he thinks, how noble his thoughts are!” Cecile still forced herself to imagine, in spite of it all....

But the magic was gone: her admiration of his lofty thoughts tumbled away into [139]an abyss; then suddenly, by a lightning flash through the night of that inky sky, she saw clearly that this loftiness of thought was a supreme sorrow to her in him.

It was quite dark in the room. Cecile, afraid of the lightning which revealed her to herself, had thrown herself back upon the cushions of the couch. She hid her face in her hands, pressing her eyes, as though she wished, after this moment of self-revelation, to be blind for ever.

But demoniacally it raged through her, a hurricane of hell, a storm of passion, which blew out of the darkness of the landscape, lashing the tossed waves of the stream towards the inky sky.

“Oh!” she moaned. “I am unworthy of him ... unworthy!...”