Chapter II: The “garden of Red Flowers” (2)

“Yesterday, before you came home from the office, I asked Witold all about her. She is some star of the Parisian _demi-monde_, who has made up her mind to get an engagement at any price on the stage here: and Witold is expected, on account of his influence in Warsaw, to obtain a fixed situation for her. It appears that her voice is tolerable, and her outward appearance marvellous: he has described her to me in every particular. It was, I assure you, one of the most emotional experiences I ever went through.”

She closed her eyes, to intensify the image that she was forming in her mind.

“The woman is tall, and seemingly of spare proportions: but only seemingly so. Her bony framework is exceedingly slight and reed-like: so you see, Janka, on close inquiry she is found not to be really thin.”

As she spoke, she turned upon her pillow, tearing at its satin covering with her nails, and striving to swallow down her tears of rage.

I could not contain myself.

“Why on earth does he tell you about such things? He must be a monster.”

“There are a great many things that he never can understand—what I told you seems but the merest trifle to him.”

She took a spoonful of bromide, and continued:

“You must know that he tells me she has large oval-shaped eyes, with extremely long lashes—eyes of an unfathomable black, in very striking contrast with her voluptuous mouth; always sorrowful, dreamy, and with a far-away look, like the beggar-maid loved by King Cophetua. She has also much originality, something like an odalisque, and uniting the primitiveness of a mountain goat with all the cultured grace of a maid of honour at a royal court.”

This, after the elimination of certain exaggerated points, was easily recognizable as the description of that fair Frenchwoman whom I had seen at Lipka’s. And now I understood why Imszanski had shown himself so very full of courtesy toward Czolhanski. The latter, as a theatrical critic, may be useful to him.

“She dresses, it appears, most superbly, with all the magnificence of Babylonian times: golden combs and strings of pearls in her hair; in her ears, rings of the greatest price. Moreover, she is a very miracle of depravity. Witold smiled as he told me so, with an inward look, as though recalling some particular.

“As he told me so, he smiled; and I too smiled, listening with the blandest interest. He looked at me attentively, kissed my hand, and said:

“‘Your nerves are better now, I see. How glad I am! You have no idea. You have at last realized that to feel jealous of a _cocotte_ would be unworthy of you.’

“‘Why, of course. Yes, yes; I am all right now.’ And yet, Janka, I never felt it so deeply; I never saw things with such awful clearness of vision. And alas! I never, never yet loved Witold with such passionate love.

“But, more than him, I love that pain which I feel....”

She rose in bed, as if to repel something that was weighing her down; then she sat propped up by her cushions and pillows.

“Do you imagine that in all this I had any idea of revengeful pleasure at Mme. Wildenhoff’s disappointment, and for that reason made him tell me what he did? Not in the least. I wanted to drink my fill of pain; as in Spain they wave a red flag in bull-fights before the bloodshot eyes of the poor brute, to make him yet madder with rage and despair, so I wished to excite myself to the same delirious state.

“I do not wish for anything that can diminish the intensity of my anguish, I hate whatever could mitigate or deaden it. I love to gloat over the raw bleeding wounds, bare and unbandaged....”

At that moment, the nurse tapped at the door, to ask whether Orcio might not come in to bid his mother good morning.

“No—no! shut the door! I will have no one here! Janka, you have not the least idea how I _hate_ my son.”

At Lipka’s to-night: and this time in a private room. Mme. Wildenhoff talked at great length, somewhat to the following effect:

“There is in reality only one kind of perfect love—that of the brute creation; indeliberate, irreflective love, wherein victory is to the strongest and most beautiful; the pure reproductive instinct, unalloyed by any culture or mental analysis whatsoever. But we—we, who are civilized—unfortunately look down upon this sort of love. For we have reckoned, with quasi-mathematical exactitude, how much of love should be taken, and how much rejected, in order to get the greatest possible sum of quintessential delight. And thence has sprung quite a new type of love: instinct which has emancipated itself from obedience to the laws of nature—love with its chief motive, preservation of the species, eliminated. Now love of the kind I have spoken of generally receives the epithet of bestial; whereas on the contrary it is most specially the outcome of refinement.”

“It appears among nations at the epoch of their highest development, and is the harbinger of their speedy decline,” remarked Czolhanski, with solemn dignity.

“What does it matter? _Après nous le déluge!_”

“And to what class would you assign conjugal love?” asked Owinski. Gina, who had silently disposed her lithe, snake-like, supple figure on a little sofa, looked round with astonishment at her _fiancé_.

“Oh, we may call it love of a third type,” answered Madame Wildenhoff: “love sanctioned by law, the union of two souls in friendship, and the bringing forth of rachitic offspring: an abnormal combination of brute and human love.”

“Do you then, Madame,” urged Owinski, “perceive no good points in marriage?”

“None whatever,” she replied with a bland smile, “because—and this reason alone would suffice me—because I hate marriage with all my heart. It has been and is the aim of my life to blast marriage, whenever I can succeed in doing so. Between the happiest and most moral couples—those in which one of the two, the husband or the wife, leads a profligate life, and the other knows nothing of it—I bring the dissolving element, enlightenment, and rejoice when I see the couples fall apart.”

Here she bent aside toward her husband’s chair, and said to him in an affectionate and audible whisper:

“But we are a pattern couple, are we not?”

This time, Imszanski went home with me. I overheard Czolhanski say, on taking leave of him: “You may rely upon me absolutely; I will manage everything.”

It has been terribly cold, and now there is a thaw. At such times, I love to wander up and down the avenues in the park, which then are completely deserted.

My nostrils inhale that peculiar scent of bare moist earth, and the effluvium from the buds as yet invisible; and I muse upon those incomparable and marvellously beautiful things that have never been realized.

On the yellow background of dry dead grass, there appeared in the distance a young man to whom, as to myself, loneliness was no doubt pleasant, and who enjoyed walking along the avenues oversprinkled with last year’s fallen leaves.

He came up with me, and on passing by, looked keenly into my eyes, and with something of astonishment.

I did not return his glance, but walked more slowly, so as to lag behind him.

The young man stopped presently, and waited until I came up; then he passed by me again with a protracted stare.

This manœuvre was repeated several times. Presently I was seized with an unaccountable desire to burst into a fit of nervous laughter, which I smothered down as best I could. At any rate, I had the full control of my eyes, the expression of which was mere indifference and disdain. Presently I looked him steadily in the face, to stare him out of countenance; so that he could see my attitude to be unmistakably hostile.

“But why,” I was thinking all the time, “why should I look upon him—this handsome slender stripling—as my foe? He certainly does not mean to harm me in any way; his interest is simply aroused in finding a person who has the same taste for solitude as himself, whilst he naturally has a friendly feeling towards a good-looking woman.”

The young fellow, at first kindly disposed, was nettled by the look of hostility in my eyes. He came up close to me, with a flippant laugh, and said in an ironical tone of sympathy:

“I would give anything in reason to know what sorrows of the heart have driven you to take so very romantic a walk as this.”

I was silent, and knit my brows.

“Souls that pine in loneliness,” he went on, as sarcastic as before, “ought to comfort each other, I think: don’t you?”

There was a pause, as we walked side by side.

“But why knit those fair eyebrows so? Oh, really, you frighten me.... Such malignant eyes! Come, come, I shall do you no harm; why be so cantankerous?”

In a rage and turning my back on him, I walked swiftly away. He made no attempt to follow. On arriving at the gate, where I was safe at last, I looked round. He was standing where he had stood before, and from afar waving me with bared head a graceful farewell.

The incident mortified and abashed me. I had behaved like a silly goose, narrow-minded and ill-tempered; I had spoiled a situation that might have had pleasant or curious developments. Why on earth had I done so?

Was this, again, only a matter of form? The necessity of that regular introduction, so dear to the _bourgeoisie_, in a drawing-room where two persons are made acquainted with each other by a third? Or was it not rather that dread—now a part of our life—the instinctive dread of things as they are, the eternal need of playing the part of a besieged fort, which defends itself stubbornly in order to surrender on the best terms possible?

As I came out of the park, a carriage driven at full speed passed by me; I saw a couple of feathers and a good deal of fur. Suddenly the coachman pulled up, and Mme. Wildenhoff jumped out and came towards me.

“Ah! how delighted I am to meet you! You won’t get away from me this time. Pray step in: I must make a regular woman of you.”

“With pleasure: but what’s the matter?”

“You shall hear.”

We got in. Mme. Wildenhoff gave the man orders to drive slowly.

“Quite a warm day!” she observed.... “Well, you see, I have one _idée fixe_, at least that’s what my husband calls it.”

“And that is?...”

“Ah, what a coincidence to have met you, of whom I was just thinking!”

“Very good, but what do you want me for?”

“Wait a bit; I must begin at the beginning.

“Let me tell you that I consider it a most important point that we should, in the cause of Woman, meet and come to an understanding with women of so-called ‘loose character.’ And, in particular, enter into social relations with them. It is indeed an eccentricity on my part; but I enjoy stemming and making head against the current.”

“It may lead to curious developments,” I said.

“You are perfectly right. In the first place, we must all of us get to understand our community of interests. The social boycott which the whole _demi-monde_ has to undergo, is a real civil war waged by women against one another; a weakening of our powers, to which men not only do not object, but which they also tend to aggravate. It is they who make ‘those dreadful creatures, bereft of a conscience,’ responsible for all the transgressions which they themselves commit: so that the fury of jealousy which their mothers and their wives, actual or intended, would otherwise pour out upon their heads, is all transformed into a feeling of hatred against such women. It is undoubtedly a very clever bit of tactics on their part; but we ought not to let ourselves be taken in so easily; we should all close our ranks and join shoulder to shoulder to fight the common foe.”

“But what if those women hate us more than we do them?”

“That they do, is true; but it is only because they believe us to be happier than they are. We have to dispel this egregious delusion; we must let them know that we feel our wrongs as keenly as they do theirs; that we recognize them as our companions in womanhood, as sharers in our common humanity.... It is because we do nothing that such a falsehood has been able to take such strong root.

“We should join with them, for they are our necessary complement: not only so, but mingle with them without endeavouring to intensify the difference between us and them by trying, in so far as we can, to deprive our souls of those immense fields of womanliness, and renounce to our own detriment the glamour of frivolity and of frailty. There must be a thorough fusion; and it is only by such levelling down that we shall arrive at the synthesis of womanhood: a new type, a complete type, in which the only difference observable will be those of individuals, not of avocations.”

“All that’s very fine, but where are you taking me?”

“I am coming to that. I am just paying a formal visit to an ex-courtesan, a Mme. Wieloleska—formerly Mary _tout court_, for I don’t know her family name. And I absolutely want you to come along with me.”

“But ... is she possible?”

“Quite; you may believe me. She takes everything as a matter of course, and will be much pleased to receive you.... Only you will have to behave exactly as if she were Wieloleski’s real wife.”

“What? then they are not married?”

“The idea! The man has a wife and five children somewhere down in the country.... And that woman has got such a hold on him that he won’t stir so much as one step from her side.... You must take a look at their place.... She was formerly quite a common _demi-mondaine_, though well spoken of.”

“And how did you get to know her?”

“Oh, she’s an old acquaintance, made by means of Imszanski.”

The carriage had stopped in front of an ornamental gateway, leading to a handsome suburban villa, screened from view to some extent by a tracery of branches and tree-trunks, and in a frame of towering fir-trees.

As I went up the broad white steps at the entrance, I felt my heart beat, and could not tell exactly why. Perhaps at the fancy which then came to me, that I might, within those very doors, come face to face with the naked, dark, and horrible mystery of Life!

An elderly and very stylish footman raised the door-hanging to usher us into a large sitting-room, conventionally furnished _à la sécession_.

In a few minutes there entered a very tall, slim, lady-like person, quietly dressed in a clinging morning gown, somewhat like a riding-habit, and followed by a little white lamb, which came treading stiffly and sometimes funnily sliding along the polished floor.

Mme. Mary welcomed Mme. Wildenhoff with smiling effusion.

“I have come to call upon you with a friend of mine: Miss Dernowicz, Mme. Wieloleska,” she said, introducing me. “I trust you will have no objection; I wanted to show her your greenhouse very much.”

“Indeed, my dear Madame, but you are doing me a pleasure. I feel so bored in this solitude, where I see nobody at all. All day long, my husband is in the greenhouse or pottering about the hotbeds; he has engaged a new gardener from Haarlem, and it is quite out of the question getting him anywhere out of doors. If you care, we shall have a look at the greenhouse at once. I tell you, if it were not for my books and studies, I really might be tempted to make away with myself.”

“And why should you not take a walk sometimes? The weather is splendid just now.”

“Oh, no! My husband won’t go out; and it would not be proper for a woman to go out alone. You know how uncharitable people are.”

“And what may you be studying, Madame?” I asked.

“Pretty nearly everything possible,” she replied, laughing. “I take at least five hours of lessons daily. One of my professors only just left the house: he is giving me a course of University lessons on the ancient literature of India. Since a week, too, I have been learning to read hieroglyphics.... Haven’t you made a study of them?... They are very interesting.... One is carried away—other lands, other times.... And I am so curious about everything in the world.... But I am best in languages. It is so extremely important to be able to read every writer in the original.”

“For you must know,” put in Mme. Wildenhoff, “that Mme. Mary is a well-known linguist.”

“Indeed?”

“Ah,” she said, smiling modestly, “it all comes to me so easily. At the present time, I am proficient in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, and Russian. This year I am learning the Finnish and Japanese languages. I have, moreover, read Homer and Virgil in the original Greek and Latin. Not one hundredth part of their marvellous beauties can be rendered in a translation: and I am so sensitive to the Beautiful...!”

“Do you know?” she broke off, turning towards Mme. Wildenhoff, “I have at last managed to satisfy my husband that we must positively take a trip to Algeria. And that will have to be in a few weeks: it is too hot there in summer.... Ah! you can’t think how hard it is to get him away from those flowers of his; he loves them so dearly!”

I examined Mme. Wieloleska with careful scrutiny. Her face is pale and surrounded with scanty locks of fair hair; her eyes, small, greyish and expressionless, and bordered with a faint pink hue, are continually in motion to and fro; she has a tiny nose with rounded nostrils, and a full, rather bloodless mouth, now and then moving with a quick twitch, like a child making a wry face; and with all that she is attractive. Her talkativeness, her tuneless voice, and a certain carelessness in her manner, correct one’s first impression that she is pretentious, and give the effect of a schoolgirl _désinvolture_, rather than the effrontery of a _bona-roba_.

She stooped to caress her pet lamb, which had lain down at her feet in a posture that suggested careful training. Then she rose, saying: “Perhaps we may now go and look at the place.”

On our way to the conservatory, we had to pass through several rooms and galleries full of pictures. On the right, we saw a workroom, with bright jets of gas burning, though the night had not yet fallen. Several girls were there, busily bending over tambour frames.

“These are my little ones,” said Mme. Wieloleska, smiling at them. “Unfortunately, I have no children myself, so I have undertaken to bring up these girls.”

“What are they about here?”

“They are learning embroidery, under the tuition of a German instructress. I am particularly anxious that my philanthropic plans may not do them more harm than good; for my husband very wisely says that ‘it is not hard to give, but to give judiciously....’”

“Well, but what do you do with the embroidered work afterwards?”

“Oh, you see, I don’t like to wear lace upon my linen—besides, it is not the fashion nowadays—so I have everything covered over with embroidery. Linen is far more beautiful so. I—I might perhaps show you—yes, I think it’s all right here—only women present....”

She laughed, winking significantly, and took us farther down the passage, where, with a swift twist and twirl, like a ballet-dancer, she raised her dress above her knees, showing several tiers of cambric flounces beyond her silk stockings. At no other time of our visit was there anything to recall what she had once been.

“You, I fancy,” she said, turning to me, “wear a petticoat; I am not sure you had not better give it up. A well-flounced undergarment makes the dress look quite sufficiently wide; a petticoat altogether effaces the outlines of the hips.” Then passing her hand down my waist: “It is a pity,” she said; “for you have a splendid shape—hips like a Spanish woman’s.”

We have found Wieloleski standing at the very end of the conservatory, and carefully watching his gardener at work. He is a tall man, something over forty, rather stout; very elegant-mannered, and courteous, but distant and abstracted. He has an extensive bald place, with long thin wisps combed over it from the left, though without any attempt at concealment; and an abundant black beard.

As he was taking us about his greenhouse, he observed: “It is only at present, and since I have been living here, that I have learned to understand Tolstoi properly. It is only by a close acquaintance with nature and with manual work, that we discover all the emptiness of society life and its form and prejudices, and all the futility of social dissensions and hatreds.”

I am not so well able to maintain my position as a cool observer, as Mme. Wildenhoff is: and here I could not refrain from presenting an objection to him.

“And nevertheless, your being able to stand thus aside in social struggles, proceeds from the fact that you possess property; and property itself lies within the sphere of these struggles, since they make an object of it. So the very land you own brings you back into these classes of society from which you flee.”

Wieloleski, rather surprised, offered me a few white kalia flowers, just gathered, before he replied, in a calm but very dogmatic tone.

“On this point, I cannot agree with you. Those who dispute the right of property take no account of the reality of things. Immemorial custom has made the right of property as much a ‘category of thought,’ as Space is, or Time.”

Mary, who was just behind us, interrupted him: “Oh, Edmund is reading you a lecture already, I hear. My dear, you had better come and flirt with Mme. Lola, and I’ll take Miss Janina with me.”

She came and put her arm round my waist, saying that she liked me very much indeed. This I answered with an indulgent smile, always suitable when women pay compliments to women.

She felt that this was not the way to win me, so she set to talk about literature.

“There are some books,” she said, “in which I find a rest, and which enable me to escape from reality altogether. And that’s why I can’t bear such authors—Zola, for instance—as bring dirt which ought to revolt any delicate mind, into a sphere where poetry alone should reign supreme.”

I hazarded another objection here.

“Do you not think that the first step towards healing the ulcers of society is to lay them bare?”

“Ugh! why write about them? We all know them too well! In life itself, there is, I tell you, quite enough of sorrow and of miasma. You, so young, may possibly not have as yet had any opportunity of coming into contact with them.... No, no: why should we ourselves spoil the short sweet moments when it is possible to dream?”

She then proposed that we should take a rest on a seat of bamboo-work, ensconced amongst exotic plants and shrubs in large green tubs. As soon as we had sat down, her trained pet lamb came and lay down on the skirt of her dress.

“Every one ought to have some sacred book—some Bible or other—ought he not?” she asked, after a short silence. “Alas! there is no one, with ever so little knowledge of philosophy, who can possibly believe in the existence of God—and all the rest of it.

“But we can at any rate respect the poetry which religion contains, and the feelings of those who have not as yet lost their faith: is it not so?”

“Certainly,” I replied with the utmost gravity.

“Well, the Bible which I could not go to sleep without reading, and out of which I read portions daily instead of my prayers, is that book of legends by Voragine.... Do you know it?”

“Oh, yes,” I assented, “the _Golden Legend_.”

“Oh, what a world of poetry there is in it! What treasures of freshness and simplicity of feeling!”

“Well, I say! if they are all of her kidney!” was all I remarked to Mme. Wildenhoff, as I returned with her after our half-hour’s call at Wieloleski’s. I felt a good deal bored, and mused over the meaning of the well-known aphorism:

_Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille._[1]

Footnote 1:

When the brute’s gorged, an angel wakes within it.

For some time Imszanski has been spending his evenings at home! He either goes out later in the evening, or not at all, and Martha’s hopes are reviving within her; but I do not take this conversion of his very seriously.

We three sit together frequently; now and then Czolhanski and Owinski, or Rosuchowski drop in.

One peculiarity about Owinski is the continual vague absent look in his eyes, caused by his extremely short sight. He cannot see two paces in front of him, and distinguishes people by their voices only. His facial muscles are in constant play; and he never smiles but with set teeth. He is very far indeed from being good-looking; yet I do not wonder at Gina’s loving him to distraction.

Witold has been pleased to take me as his confidante now. He is probably feeling compunction for his recent behaviour, somewhat late in the day.

Life, taken in general, is a barren waste. His theory of love does not permit him to hold innocent those delusions of the senses which are usually termed “bits of love-making,” though in reality, they and love have nothing in common. They are then evil; but they have become necessary evils, to which men have in the course of ages completely accustomed themselves; evils from which women—he means of course those of the better classes—are free, and against which they ought to be guarded with the utmost care. By means of this reasoning, he considers his relations with Martha to be all they should be; for he always endeavoured to spare her, and to preserve her high ideals, and her feelings of purity.

I could not help smiling as he said this, knowing as I did how little his intention had been realized.

But now he too seems to be tiring of the life he leads—this howling wilderness of a life. “These women are so shallow, so mindless, so fatuous! Their own looseness of morals is the keynote which decides every one of their acts.”

I could now shrewdly guess what his drift was.

“Take, for instance, Mme. Wildenhoff. She enjoys a change of—affections—once a month. That’s her business: but why the devil does she bring in Philosophy and Sociology, and Emancipation? The thing she does is as old as the hills, and why trouble about her and women like her?”

I had long ago made the remark that men object to women who argue. On the other hand, they rate their souls very high indeed. Now, Witold confesses, it is the soul—the soul alone, the soul at any price—that he wants to have.

Who knows whether he will not again become a faithful husband to Martha?

I dislike all colourless people. And I dislike myself along with them, since I find I am growing more and more colourless day by day. I feel out of sympathy with my own type of character: I am ordinary. I have had enough of my life; more than enough of it.

How terribly I am craving now for some one who shall tell me—and tell me incessantly—that I am good-looking and clever and original in mind, that I dress nicely and move gracefully.

For though at this moment I am quite satisfied that none of these things are so: yet, if I were told so this day, I should at once believe it to be true.

I am in pain. At times I feel a special need of saying all that I think. At times it is so hard to wear a mask.... And I want some sympathy....

I was at the Wildenhoff’s to-day, and had a talk with Witold. I cannot conceive how it came about, but on a sudden I found I was saying too much—or rather, speaking too much to the point.

Finding the position I had taken up was too advanced and too much exposed, I decided to beat a retreat.

“But can you conceive in what the tragedy of my life consists in reality?” I asked.

On which, in mute questioning, he raised his beautiful mournful eyes to mine.

“In that all I have told you is untrue ... and all I have not told you is untrue likewise. It is my style to talk of my sadness one day, and the next to tell of my life’s cloudless philosophy.”

“And to whom of all men do you tell the truth? To Wiazewski? I don’t know. Perhaps to no one. When I have taken off, one after another, all the styles I wear, there is nothing more left of me.”

At this juncture, Mme. Wildenhoff, dressed in a very low-cut black velvet gown, came up to us.

“Why has not Martha been here to-day?” she asked. “We have not seen her for ever so long.”

“She meant to come but she is continually a victim to sick headaches.”

“Ah, yes, those sick headaches,” she remarked sympathizingly. “They are so very hard to get rid of!”

Presently she asked if I would come and look at a beautiful screen, a birthday gift for her, painted by Gina. Imszanski remained where he was.

I asked Mme. Wildenhoff why Owinski was not present.

“Really, I cannot say,” was her answer. “He was to come: but it is rather late.”

“I noticed that Gina was very much out of sorts to-day.”

“Yes, and I must say that I feel rather uneasy about her. There is something here that I cannot at all understand, and I love the girl.... Owinski is perpetually wool-gathering; he is a man you cannot rely upon.... He strikes me as one who would be deaf to any remonstrances, any reproaches.... He is a typical poet....”

“Then it may be that Gina is wrong in holding off from marriage with the man.”

“Marriage? A fine thing that would be! She is surely wealthy enough to do without it.... Marriage!” she added, not without a touch of pride. “Of what use was it in Imszanski’s case, I beg?”

She just looked into a mirror, hanging opposite her bed, and then swiftly glanced over me from head to foot. The comparison between us must have been not unpleasant, for she at once became more cheerful and friendly.

“My dear Miss Janina, Gina’s is a nature far too artistic for marriage. No one who can paint like that would ever make a husband of her sweetheart. Pardon me; the thing is absolutely out of the question.... Look at those flowers; with what grace she has dashed them off!”

“They are certainly exquisite. But did you notice how extraordinary an interest Owinski took in what you were saying about marriage last Thursday?”

“Yes, oh, yes; I remember.... But I can’t suppose he is thinking of marrying any one else.... No, that is surely impossible.”

She was at once in a state of great excitement.

“Look here. Now that marriage is no more than a contract, assuring to the wife board and lodging for self and offspring, and to the husband a woman in permanency, always at home and on the _qui vive_; now that a bachelor cannot marry until he has achieved a position in the world, so that a marrying man who is not bald sounds like a _contradictio in adjecto_,—marriage amounts in principle to the same as prostitution, whereas its every particular is yet more shocking.”

“I am afraid I don’t quite follow you.”

“Why, the thing is as clear as clear can be. A courtesan makes only a temporary bargain, and if she makes it for a longer time, she always reserves to herself complete liberty of action, some intervals of freedom, and the power of breaking her chain whenever she pleases; whilst the ‘honest woman’ makes the bargain for her whole life, without any hope of ever being set free: for we need not take divorce into account, were it but for the fact that a divorced woman is adversely viewed by her ‘honest’ sisters.... A common courtesan, even one who lodges in a house of ill fame, has her ‘Alphonse,’ some one to whom, and some place wherein she can give sincere, true and disinterested love, which the average honest woman cannot dare to allow herself, without the imminent danger of losing her right of alimony. Now, as to the moral difference. It lies in this: that one possesses only one husband, together with the respect of society, whereas the other has many, and is despised. Though I cannot for the life of me see what logical connection there is between a number of lovers and the obligation for a woman to respect the rights of humanity. Again: the police take charge of the street-walker’s health; but who sees after the wife that her own husband has contaminated? The former may die of _anything_; the other, the honest woman, in childbed, if married; if not—if, having no portion, she cannot have a husband—she may die of what you will—and there you are! And Abolitionists arrange congresses, publish books and pamphlets, found philanthropic institutions, refuges, Christian associations to raise fallen women, and young people’s leagues to shield their purity during school-years. All this, to what purpose? That a common doctor, and not the police, should see after the street-girl’s health; that a few silly females should be shut up, not in bagnios, but in sewing-rooms; and that some women may have to teach their husbands certain things which the latter have not yet learnt! And all this in the interest of ‘coming generations!’ An empty phrase. Is not all that most ridiculous?”

She laughed; but to me her words were painful.

“But then, instead of this, are we to do nothing?”

“Not at all. Let us found homes and refuges: not for the women, but for the children whose mothers are unable to take care of them. And as to the so-called ignominy, that will remain; but we ought to laugh it to scorn. And allow me to add,” she went on, in a more earnest tone, “that to loosen in so far as we can all artificial bonds is a far easier and a more natural task than to draw them still tighter. Both roads lead to the same goal,—with the difference that in one case the goal would signify freedom, and in the other slavery.”

As she spoke, I remembered what Witold had said to me about her.

She abruptly broke off. “Oh, let’s join the company! What will they think of a hostess who neglects her guests so!”

In the drawing-room, Owinski had not made his appearance as yet. Gina, as beautiful as a portrait by some Old Master, was reclining silently, in an amaranthine-coloured easy-chair.

Imszanski shot a glance and a faint smile at Mme. Wildenhoff, and offered me his arm to go in to supper.

Whoever it was—Amiel, I think,—who maintained that women do not care to be analyzed, was in the wrong. It is rather men who dislike such analysis.

Why does a woman rarely fall in love with a man inferior to herself? Because she wants to be loved for all that is in her. And thence proceeds the grievance, not less distasteful than groundless, that men do not look on women as having minds as well as bodies. Now a man is quite satisfied if the woman acknowledges his superiority over her.

Those whom I like best are not those who attract me most, but who are able to comprehend and to realize my whole power of attraction. That is why I dislike to hear Imszanski babbling, in a superficial and general manner, of the excellence of my nature, not knowing in what it consists, and unable to grasp it.

And that, too, is why I have a liking for Wiazewski, and a wish that he could find it in his heart to love me.

Spring is coming. With a hot sun overhead, there is a cool breeze around. I feel joyful, and frolicsome, and full of animal spirits. I could fall upon the neck of the first man I met in the street! To be loved by somebody, that is my craving. I might feel less fearfully alone and cut off from everything in the world,—I would give many a year of my life. Lord! if anyone would kiss me ... now!—Only, not one of those.... Oh, not one of them!

So many years have passed away since that parting, never to fade out of my mind! Yes: he was the only man I could ever have loved.... How quickly it all passed away, and how completely it all came to an end! Strange.—A bit of life.

And now it sleeps, that happiness,—sleeps beneath the flowery palls of many a springtime, past and gone.

Such a spring; oh, well-a-day! And in my heart and life all is so blank and so dismal!

I have lived but a short, a very short time; and notwithstanding, how many and how fair flowers of memory have I culled! If I could only remember them all—all of them—why, then, life would be endurable still.

And I am ever, as I go on, closer and closer to life: I wade along, athwart its foaming and tempestuous current; but it is in vain I would try to plunge into its waves and moisten these lips of mine, so parched with thirst,—as if I were traversing a sea of quicksilver, whose dry metallic drops fly into liquid dust when they are touched.

And still I have to wait—to wait—to wait for something else, something like the spring in its glamour and its sunshine—to wait for a marvel, a prodigy, a miracle, that is to come!

In company with Gina and Owinski, I was just leaving a coffee-house. In front of us, surrounded by several men, there walked a woman, rather thickset, far from tall, who wore a short-skirted, bright-coloured dress, and a wide-brimmed hat, also of a bright hue. She went slowly, with an undulating motion of the hips, turning, now to right, now to left, now behind her, chattering with lively interest, and addressing them all together, her hands meanwhile nimble with gestures like those of a flower-girl offering nosegays. We caught glimpses of her profile,—very long lashes and a short straight nose. There seemed to be some witchery wafted towards me from that figure.

“A _cocotte_?” I asked Gina.

She looked at her, and nodded, with a lowering face.

We had previously been talking of love. She resumed the subject where I had interrupted her.

... “Ah, but I am not by any means telling you it is absolute bliss. No. Love only intensifies all things whatever: and thus, not joy only, but pain as well. Love is an exceedingly powerful stimulant, the strengthener of all that belongs to life. And this, when all its colours are thus suddenly brightened up, becomes like some magic fairy tale, some eternal Divine Vision of life....”

Owinski, plunged deep in his musings, was not listening to us at all, though Gina spoke especially for him. The golden fire which flashed in her eyes died out when she realized this.

“We ourselves are alone in fault; it is we who have brought about that immense misery, the fiery pain of which is now eating our hearts out. For every time we have turned a man away from us, every denial of the lips that belied the pulsing of the blood is a sin against Life. Every such night, when those who craved love for love received it not, but were perforce obliged to purchase it with gold, is a sin against Life—of which _we_ are guilty.

“And therefore should we all—like consecrated priestesses,—go forth:—forth to suffering and to shame, with the laughter of Spring, and its cry _Evoë_! love for love, joy for joy, pain for pain,—welling up from our hearts!”

“But why then pain?”

“I do not know; but so it has to be. Surely you feel that intense joy is not to be purchased without intense pain.”

Owinski, looking down the long vista of the street, took not the slightest interest in what she was saying. Gina became silent; it may be that a feeling of shame had come upon her.

The strangely bewitching woman had stopped, coming to a sudden standstill to take leave of some of her companions. Her laughter resounded through the brightly lit, deserted street, with all the effrontery and witchery of Life itself.

Half-consciously, Owinski turned towards her, and so did we; a breath of the coming spring seemed blowing in our direction thence.

“Is she to your taste?” Gina asked her fiancé, with a curiosity in her tone of voice that she strove to make light of.

“What did you say?—oh, I don’t know, didn’t see her,” he returned, wool-gathering as usual.

Wishing to please her, he again turned round to look; but the whole company had already disappeared in the doorway of a neighbouring restaurant.

Gina took his arm, with a gesture of famished and baffled desire. Laying her head on the sleeve of his great-coat, she brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek.

“No,” she said to me in an undertone; “no, I cannot tell; I myself am ignorant of the end for which suffering exists; why must there always be suffering?”

Still Owinski heard not a word we said; so we could converse quite freely. For my part, I could not love a man so continually lost in thought.

“Seldom have I happened upon a type in such sharp contrast to all that I am,” she continued, alluding to the woman we had just seen.

Far down in Gina’s eyes, whose nervous energy was tired and worn out,—somewhere very deep down,—there shone a livid gleam of disquiet.

She gazed searchingly at her fiancé, but there was no change in the expression of his face. After a time, he was aware that her glance was upon him; then he bent forward to her, and, stroking her glove, said smiling:

“What is the matter with you, Gina?”

“Nothing—only love for you,” she whispered.

Afterwards, we sat with Mme. Wildenhoff almost till dawn.

“What’s to be done? If he loves her no longer, he cannot be forced to stay with her,” said Mme. Lola to me, speaking of Owinski, of course. “Changes in feeling have nothing in common with ethics and the sense of duty.” ... And so on, and so on.

Gina approached us presently.

“To-morrow I shall be living by myself,” she told us. “I am now in such a state that I can’t bear any one, not even so amiable a person as Idalia. She will live in my studio, which she likes very much, and the room that she rented formerly will now be let. I should greatly like to find another tenant for her.”

Mme. Wildenhoff turned upon me directly with these unexpected words:

“Wouldn’t you like to lodge with Idalia? She plays so beautifully; and that family life must, I fancy, bore you by now.”

It then occurred to me that Mme. Wildenhoff’s intention was to get me away from Imszanski! Was I right? Possibly.

“I shall think it over,” I answered in a pleasant tone. “Though indeed I like just as much to hear Martha play.”

This staying up all night long nearly once every forty-eight hours or so fatigues me beyond measure. They—that is, all the others—have nothing to do; they rise at noon, and enjoy plenty of money and leisure; and their greatest enjoyment is talking interminably about the deepest problems of existence. But for me, what with having battle with sleep in the morning, to walk so very far to my office through mud and slush, and to sit motionless at my desk for so many hours, those nights charge me with a burden very hard to bear. I have, it is true, a frame of iron: but such a life would wear it out at length.

I am weary and miserable, and from time to time I feel almost distracted. My state is that of one who has an appointment, and waits, waits, waits, through the hours and through the years, although the time allotted to keep it has long since passed by. I experience the same fever of impatience, the same clutching at my heart, when in my delusion I think I can at last hear his footsteps; the same chill of terror, when for an instant I think he will never come.

All this is very banal, very “missish.” Yes, I know, I know. But now and then it is simply beyond my power to keep down, simply overwhelming. For the time assigned to me, the wonderful time of meeting with one whom I love, fled into the past so long, so long ago!

Ah, it has come, that time! It came yesterday. I had already felt it in the air for many a day; it was in Martha’s eyes; my own heart told me. And while I yearned for it constantly, yet did I fear it like a sentence of death.

Having returned long after Martha had fallen asleep, he noticed that there was a light in my room, and tapped gently. I did not answer: nevertheless he came in.

“How late you have stayed up reading!” he said in a whisper. And then, seating himself on the couch beside me, he remained silent.

Covering my eyes with my hands, I let my head droop as low as to his knees, and in an instant was possessed with a mad, frenzied effervescence of expectancy. I shivered all over as with the ague; then shook all over with soundless laughter. Something was leaping up in my breast, palpitating in my very throat, in my brain, in my hands that were covering my eyes.... Had this unparalleled excitement lasted but one moment more I should have cried out aloud with terror and agony.

Then in an instant I grew quiet, overwhelmed with a sense of sudden numbness: and I let my head droop yet lower. Witold bent over me, and kissed my hair and shoulders. And then he raised up my head, and showered kisses on my eyes and mouth and throat.

Not one word of love did we speak. Already, long before, we had understood one another. But there were a thousand thoughts rushing through my brain.

He bent his marvellously beautiful head down to my knees, and whispered low some few strange inaudible words—words of incantation, words of magic: he could afford to be humble, for he was like a king who knows how mighty he is and how supreme. And then his lips were very red, as on fire....

All at once I shook myself free with a hissing intake of the breath, and gently extricated myself from his embrace.

“What, my Queen of the Icy Caverns!” he said in sport, with his eyes fixed upon mine. “Has some thought of death come to make you afraid?”

“No; I was thinking of Martha.”

His bantering humour left him at once.

“Oh! for once in our lives surely we might learn to think only of ourselves,” he said, and his tone showed that he was vexed with me.

“And have you found that lesson so very hard to learn?”

“That’s unkind of you,” he whispered, and closed my mouth with a kiss....

“And now I have no more love left, not even for my husband. Not that I love another, not that Witold has made me suffer torments beyond endurance. No: I am merely unable to feel anything else in the world save pain. The very thought of him is a torture.”

As she spoke, I bowed my head very low.

“It may be that there is some world in which Kant’s ‘categories’ do not hold, where we are out of Space, out of Time. I believe it is so. Sometimes space does not exist for me: I have the power to see all those he has loved with him in one place. There are moments, too, when time does not exist for me: I can see them all together in one instant—both those that have been and those that are to be; _yes, those that are to be_, Janka.”

From under her brows she threw me a questioning glance, and went on:

“But I can see, I can fancy nothing, save under the mental form of Pain. Yes, and I have thus discovered a new ‘category’!”

It were difficult to say why, just at that moment, I remembered Wieloleski and his discovery that land-owning was also a “category,” and this put me in a humour of pleasantry that it was not easy to shake off.

“Looked at through this prism of Pain,” she continued, “the sun itself is black, the most superb flowers in the Red Garden turn to tongues of flame, and the cistern filled with flowers of bliss changes into an infinite, infinite ocean of blood.”

She looked round, and shuddered.

“Pray, Janka, do not go to bed to-night; do not leave me alone during the dark hours. Truly, I cannot remember when he went out. I think he was not at all at home to-day.”

“Yes, he was; he dined with us.”

She passed her hand over her brow.

“You are right, but it doesn’t matter. At any rate, he will not be here till morning. Janka, do not sleep in your room!”

By this time it is impossible for me to endure the sight of Martha. She fills me with such mystic awe that I am ready to shriek aloud with dread of her. I feel as though I were the cause of all her afflictions, as if it were I who have marred her life. Her eyes hurt me—those great dark-blue, sorrowful eyes. But all the same it must make no difference to her; to her who—

On returning from the office, I stepped in to Mme. Wildenhoff’s, to see about the room Gina spoke of. At any price, I must get away from here. I want never to see either her or him any more.

Mme. Wildenhoff was a little paler than her wont; she looked out of sorts, and complained that her head ached. I understood that something had gone wrong between him and her. And again my heart was crushed with fear. Only when I looked at her did I remember that she likewise—... I had for the time being entirely forgotten that fact. My first impulse was to flee her; but Mme. Wildenhoff retained me against my will. She, I think, has not made any definite guess; but the other!

“I must confess to you,” she began, “that all I have made you think of me is untrue—a mask of mine, a mannerism, an empty theory. All women are at their heart’s core exactly alike; during all their life they follow one thing alone, and perish in pursuit of it.”

“You mean love?” I questioned, trying clumsily to feign indifference.

“Yes. That is the one thing. It is our fate; if not the first thing that we pursue, it is always the last that we give up. There is no help for it—none. We may be all our life forcing upon ourselves the conviction that we have the same rights as men, and are capable of bearing the same amount of liberty as they; but there must come a moment when, for that one true love, we most willingly give up all its counterfeits.”

“But you have, Madame, the comfort to know that men too are liable to a similar reaction. When quite sated with freedom, the very greatest profligates will settle down to a married life.”

“Only for a short while, and then they begin all over again, and return to their favourite pastime.... Why, take Imszanski, for instance; you surely know him well....”

My face flushed up as red as fire, but I undauntedly raised my eyes to hers. She, on encountering my gaze, blushed, too. Once more I felt an uneasy flutter at my heart.

She burst into a sudden transport.

“I love, I love, and without any return!—Oh, how unlike me, is it not?”

Whereupon she laughed hysterically, and then shed tears, tearing at her handkerchief with her teeth. She was waiting for me to put her some questions, that she might be able to confide her sorrows to me. I thought I should soon be likely to go mad.

At last Gina came in. She took me to Idalia, a fairly well-known pianist, who returned here from Paris a year since.