Chapter V (6)

“The cheek”--he almost touched it as it shone soft and pale in the light--“the cheek gets more sharply modeled, more set in contour, sinks in a little here, as when a flower petal withers. The forehead,--it will stay the same, only a line straight across as if an invisible knife had cut into the brain and divided the thoughts; barred in some to pine away up here, and driven the others to wrestle in nakedness and confinement. The hair,--it will grow darker with age and disfiguring attention, it will droop here and lie like a weight. The eyebrows,--you see there is a bend between them, they sink here, which gives a suggestion of nervous sensibility, of vibrating thoughts; but this will become no longer noticeable when she opens her eyes, nothing will be noticeable then but their depth of weariness, their infinity of freezing chill.

“Imagine the color of the whole harder, more vivid; weigh down all that is heavy, make sharp all that is light and delicate, harden all that is strong, banish joy with a cuff and blushes with a sneer, and there you have her, that is what will become of her. Pretty, eh! prettier than now because she’ll be even more effective to draw, eh?”

He stood silent a while and looked at her, his shadow trembling. Then he went on:

“That’s what she’ll come to be, and that, too, is all that such as we have the right to think of. But what she _might_ be, ah! what she might be. If someone could take her as she lies there and dreams, take her and carry her far away and lift her on high in his arms. We keep on talking about art here, about what we intend and what the time is dreaming of. If there is anyone that has the same dreams that she has and the strength to will them, if there is anyone who’s a man, she is his. And what might not become of them both!”

He looked about him at us others who sat bending forward, gazing with hypnotized looks at the white gleaming countenance of the girl. At his last words we started half up; it was as if we waited that some one should come, that some one should grip us by the hair and hurl us forward, should lift us to where space was bright around us. Something should come to birth in us, sharp as a steel blade, unbending, unsullied, the blue sword of our will and life should be created among us, true life with warm soil and the sun that impels to growth. In the heat of the room we felt it already glowing in us by anticipation, cheeks and foreheads were red, a warm current of blood set in, there were white sparks in the eyes, and a shiver trembled along the spine.

Thereupon the girl awoke, as if roused by the clamor of all these thoughts as they beat their wings and struck together. First her eyes stared in fright, and then she laughed.

We all sunk back again.

“I didn’t know where I was,” she said.

“Oh, you weren’t afraid of us, were you?” inquired Jacques. “You saw that there was no one dangerous here.”

“Oh, no, I surely wasn’t afraid.” She laughed more merrily still. “No, there’s no one dangerous here. But I must have been asleep a long while. I must go now.”

We all offered to go with her, but she looked straight at us.

“Why?” she asked, “is the outside door locked?”

“No, not yet. But the street, the dark, the snow!”

“Oh, only that! But I went out alone. No, no, nobody needs to go along with me. I know my way.”

Nobody thought of opposing her, her voice was so remarkably firm; almost scornful, we thought.

We lighted her to the door and saw her small feet step quickly on the yellow lamplight, which grew paler along the tile floor and was broken by the light on the stairway.

When she was half out of sight we called for the last time, “You’ll come again, won’t you?”

She turned her head. From under the ugly old hat her eyes looked out at us, deep and sombre.

“No,” she said, “I shan’t come again. Why should I?”

She was gone, and we all rushed forward to the window, opened it and leaned out, stretching ourselves over the sill. She had not got down yet. Before us lay the black bulks of the houses, defiantly heavy and motionless to our gaze. Here and there was a faint yellow gleam from a street lamp; one could see some large, loose flakes glide through it. The air was gray, swarmingly alive with darkness and a little farther out across the roofs the church tower stood with its shining dials against the black horizon.

Then she came out of the house door; we could hear her steps resound up to where we were through the chilly air. We followed the little black, indistinct figure out to the corner, where the lamplight took hold of it and threw it out into tawny, pale relief. With that she was gone, vanished into the blackness, into the snow and night and threatening uncertainty from which she had come.

We fastened the window and sat down. In order to do something we tried to discuss, as we were used to, about art and its future. We talked about symbolism and syntheticism, but it all seemed less worth while now than before, and from time to time a speaker would stop in the midst of his period in order to examine a line in the half-finished portrait of Cecilia, and then give it up in despair.

And there was no warmth in the discussion, only dry and ill-tempered sallies that cut now at one man’s, now at another’s hobby and caused them to bolt off into the inane, where comprehension ceases. Soon we were all silent.