Chapter VII

Chapter VII1Cecile 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.”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.“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....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 loveisthe 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,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 afata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.2He 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 physicallybeautiful. 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.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, becomehis, 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 fromhim.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 thingof 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.”“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 identifieseach 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 settleshim!”“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?”“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 canyouknow?” 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 heshould 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 canItell?”“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 decisionhe 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!”“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 herheart, 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.”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 forthe 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.”“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,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.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.“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.Youmust 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.”“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.“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 Ionly 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.”“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 alreadythere: 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.3He 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 shouldInot be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then canInot 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, forthe 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,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 hespeak 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 intoan 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!...”Chapter VIII1Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he laywithout moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’sland in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in theend to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at homeon his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-womanand the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delightof purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he couldnotcompromise and bring into harmony the elements which for ever waged war within him.When he had met Cecile and had seen her again and yet once again, he had felt himself carried wholly to the one extreme, the summit of exaltation, of pure crystal sympathy, in which the circle of his atmosphere—as he had said—glided in sympathy over hers, in a caress of pure chastity and spirituality, as two stars, spinning closer together, might mingle their atmospheresfor a moment, like breaths. What smiling happiness had not been within his reach, as it were a grace from Heaven!Then, then he had felt himself toppling down, as if he had rocked over the balancing-point; and he had longed for earthly pleasures, for great simplicity of emotion, for primitive enjoyment of life, for flesh and blood. He now remembered how, two days after his last conversation with Cecile, he had seen Emilie Hijdrecht, here, in these very rooms, where at length, stung by his neglect, she had ventured to come to him one evening, heedless of all caution. With a line of cruelty round his mouth he recalled how she had wept at his knees, how in her jealousy she had complained against Cecile, how he had ordered her to be silent and forbidden her to pronounce Cecile’s name. Then, their mad embrace, an embrace of cruelty: crueltyon her part against the man whom time after time she lost when she thought him secured for good, whom she could not understand and to whom she clung with all the violence of her brutal passion, a purely animal passion of primitive times; cruelty on his part against the woman he despised, while in his passion he almost stifled her in his embrace.2Yes, what then? How was he to find the mean between the two poles of his nature? He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he could never find it. He lacked some quality, or a certain power, necessary to find it. He could do nothing but allow himself to swing to and fro. Very well then: he would let himself swing; there was no help for it. For now, in the lassitude following his outburst of savagery, he began to experienceagain a violent longing, like one who, after a long evening passed in a ball-room heavy with the foul air of gaslight and the stifling closeness and mustiness of human breath, craves a high heaven and width of atmosphere: a violent longing for Cecile. And he smiled, glad that he knew her, that he was able to go to her, that it was now his privilege to enter into the chaste sanctuary of her environment, as into a temple; he smiled, glad that he felt his longing and proud of it, exalting himself above other men. Already he tasted the pleasure of confessing to her honestly how he had lived during the last three weeks; and already he heard her voice, though he could not distinguish the words....Jules climbed down the steps. He was disappointed that Quaerts had not followed his arranging of the weapons upon the rack and his draping of the stuffs around them. But he had quietly continuedhis work and, now that it was finished, he climbed down and came and sat on the floor quietly, with his head against the foot of the couch on which his friend lay thinking. Jules said never a word; he looked straight before him, a little sulkily, knowing that Quaerts was looking at him.“Jules,” said Quaerts.But Jules did not answer, still staring.“Tell me, Jules, what makes you like me so much?”“How should I know?” answered Jules, with thin lips.“Don’t you know?”“No. How can you know why you are fond of any one?”“You oughtn’t to be so fond of me, Jules. It’s not good.”“Very well, I will be less so in the future.”Jules rose suddenly and took his hat.He put out his hand; but Quaerts held him back with a laugh:“You see, scarcely any one is fond of me, except ... you and your father. Now I know why your father likes me, but not why you do.”“You want to know everything.”“Is that so very wrong?”“Certainly. You’ll never be satisfied. Mamma always says that no one knows anything.”“And you?”“I?... Nothing....”“How do you mean, nothing?”“I know nothing at all.... Let me go.”“Are you cross, Jules?”“No, but I have an engagement.”“Can’t you wait till I’m dressed? Then we can go together. I am going to Aunt Cecile’s.”Jules objected:“All right, provided you hurry.”Quaerts got up. He now saw the arrangement of the weapons, which he had entirely forgotten:“You’ve done it very nicely, Jules,” he said, in an admiring tone. “Thank you very much.”Jules did not answer; and Quaerts went through into his dressing-room. The lad sat down on the sofa, bolt upright, looking out at the Law Courts, across the bare trees. His eyes filled with great round tears, which ran down his cheeks. Sitting stiff and motionless, he wept.1The leading club at The Hague.Chapter IX1Cecile had passed those three weeks in a state of ignorance which had filled her with pain. She had, it is true, heard through Dolf that Quaerts was away shooting, but beyond that nothing. A thrill of joy electrified her when the door behind the screen opened and she saw him enter the room. He was standing in front of her before she could recover herself; and, as she was trembling, she did not rise, but, still sitting, reached out her hand to him, her fingers quivering imperceptibly.“I have been out of town,” he began.“So I heard.”“Have you been well all this time?”“Quite well, thank you.”He noticed that she was somewhat pale, that she had a light blue shadow under her eyes and that there was lassitude in all her movements. But he came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary in this, or that perhaps she merely looked pale in the creamy whiteness of her soft, white dress, like silky wool, even as her figure became yet slighter in the constraint of the scarf about her waist, with its long white fringe falling to her feet. She was sitting alone with Christie, the child upon his footstool with his head in her lap and a picture-book on his knees.“You two are a perfect Madonna and Child,” said Quaerts.“Little Dolf has gone out to walk with his god-father,” she said, looking fondly upon her child and motioning to him gently.At this bidding the boy stood up andshyly approached Quaerts, offering him a hand. Quaerts lifted him up and set him on his knee:“How light he is!”“He is not strong,” said Cecile.“You coddle him too much.” She laughed:“Pedagogue!” she laughed. “How do I coddle him?”“I always find him nestling against your skirts. He must come with me one of these days: I should make him do some gymnastics.”“Jules horse-riding and Christie gymnastics!” she exclaimed.“Yes ... sport, in fact!” he answered, with a meaning look of fun.She glanced back at him; and sympathy smiled from the depths of her gold-grey eyes. He felt thoroughly happy and, with the child still upon his knees, said:“I have come to confess to you ... Madonna!”Then, as though startled, he put the child away from him.“To confess?”“Yes.... There, Christie, go back to Mamma; I mustn’t keep you by me any longer.”“Very well,” said Christie, with great, wondering eyes, and caught hold of the cord of Quaerts’ eyeglass.“The Child would forgive too easily,” said Quaerts.“And I, have I anything to forgive you?” she asked.“I shall be only too happy if you will see it in that light.”“Then begin your confession.”“But the Child ...” he hesitated.Cecile stood up; she took the child, kissed him and sat him on a stool by thewindow with his picture-book. Then she came back to the sofa:“He will not hear....”And Quaerts began the story, choosing his words: he spoke of the shooting, of the ragging-parties and the peasant-woman and of Brussels. She listened attentively, with dread in her eyes at the violence of such a life, the echo of which reverberated in his words, even though the echo was softened by his reverence.“And is all this a sin calling for absolution?” she asked, when he had finished.“Is it not?”“I am no Madonna, but ... a woman with fairly emancipated views. If you were happy in what you did, it was no sin, for happiness is good.... Were you happy, I ask you? For in that case what you did was ... good.”“Happy?” he asked.“Yes.”“No.... Therefore I have sinned, sinned against myself, have I not? Forgive me ... Madonna.”She was troubled at the sound of his voice, which, gently broken, wrapped her about as with a spell; she was troubled to see him sitting there, filling with his body, his personality, his existence a place in her room, beside her. In a single second she lived through hours, feeling her calm love lying heavy within her, like a sweet weight; feeling a longing to throw her arms about him and tell him that she worshipped him; feeling also an intense sorrow at what he had admitted, that once again he had been unhappy. Hardly able to control herself in her compassion, she rose, moved towards him and laid her hand upon his shoulder:“Tell me, do you mean all this? Isit all true? Is it true that you have been living as you say and yet have not been happy?”“Perfectly true, on my soul.”“Then why did you do it?”“I couldn’t help it.”“You were unable to force yourself to be more moderate?”“Absolutely.”“Then I should like to teach you.”“And I should not like to learn, fromyou. For it is and always will be my best happiness to be immoderate also where you are concerned, immoderate in the life of my real self, my soul, just as I have now been immoderate in the life of my apparent self.”Her eyes grew dim; she shook her head, her hand still upon his shoulder:“That is not right,” she said, in deep distress.“It is a joy ... for both those beings. I have to be like that, I have to be immoderate: they both demand it.”“But that is not right,” she insisted. “Pure enjoyment ...”“The lowest, but also the highest....”A shiver passed through her, a deadly fear for him.“No, no,” she persisted. “Don’t think that. Don’t do it. Neither the one nor the other. Really, it is all wrong. Pure joy, unbridled joy, even the highest, is not good. In that way you force your life. When you speak so, I am afraid for your sake. Try to recover moderation. You have so many possibilities of being happy.”“Oh, yes!...”“Yes, but what I mean is that you must not be fanatical. And ... and also, for the love of God, don’t run quite so madly after pleasure.”He looked up at her; he saw her beseeching him with her eyes, with the expression of her face, with her whole attitude, as she stood bending slightly forward. Hesawher beseeching him, even as heheardher; and then he knew that she loved him. A feeling of bright rapture came upon him, as though something high were descending upon him to guide him. He did not stir—he felt her hand thrilling at his shoulder—afraid lest with the smallest movement he should drive that rapture away. It did not occur to him for a moment to speak a word of tenderness to her or to take her in his arms and press her to him: she was so profoundly transfigured in his eyes that any such profane desire remained far removed from him. And yet he felt at that moment that he loved her, but as he had never yet loved any one before, so completely and exclusively, with the noblest elements that liehidden away in the soul, often unknown even to itself. He felt that he loved her with new-born feelings of frank youth and fresh vigour and pure unselfishness. And it seemed to him that it was all a dream of something which did not exist, a dream lightly woven about him, a web of sunbeams.“Madonna!” he whispered. “Forgive me....”“Promise then....”“Willingly, but I shall not be able to keep my promise. I am weak....”“No.”“Ah, I am! But I give you my promise; and I promise also to try my utmost to keep it. Will you forgive me now?”She nodded to him; her smile fell on him like a ray of sunlight. Then she went to the child, took it in her arms and brought it to Quaerts:“Put your arms round his neck, Christie, and give him a kiss.”He took the child from her; it threw its little arms about his neck and kissed him on the forehead.“The Madonna forgives me ... and the Child!” he whispered.2They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in theNieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move withthe yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimesthey ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedywhich makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”“Then don’t analyse it.”“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.And they were both silent, their eyesexpanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.

Chapter VII1Cecile 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.”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.“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....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 loveisthe 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,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 afata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.2He 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 physicallybeautiful. 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.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, becomehis, 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 fromhim.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 thingof 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.”“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 identifieseach 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 settleshim!”“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?”“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 canyouknow?” 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 heshould 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 canItell?”“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 decisionhe 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!”“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 herheart, 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.”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 forthe 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.”“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,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.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.“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.Youmust 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.”“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.“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 Ionly 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.”“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 alreadythere: 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.3He 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 shouldInot be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then canInot 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, forthe 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,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 hespeak 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 intoan 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!...”

Chapter VII1Cecile 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.”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.“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....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 loveisthe 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,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 afata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.2He 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 physicallybeautiful. 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.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, becomehis, 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 fromhim.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 thingof 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.”“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 identifieseach 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 settleshim!”“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?”“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 canyouknow?” 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 heshould 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 canItell?”“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 decisionhe 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!”“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 herheart, 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.”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 forthe 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.”“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,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.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.“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.Youmust 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.”“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.“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 Ionly 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.”“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 alreadythere: 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.3He 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 shouldInot be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then canInot 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, forthe 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,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 hespeak 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 intoan 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!...”

1Cecile 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.”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.“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....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 loveisthe 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,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 afata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.

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.”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.“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....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 loveisthe 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,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 afata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.

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.”

“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.”

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.”

“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.“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....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 loveisthe 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,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 afata morgana, quivering in pure incandescence of light.

2He 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 physicallybeautiful. 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.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, becomehis, 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 fromhim.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 thingof 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.”“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 identifieseach 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 settleshim!”“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?”“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 canyouknow?” 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 heshould 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 canItell?”“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 decisionhe 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!”“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 herheart, 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.”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 forthe 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.”“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,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.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.“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.Youmust 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.”“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.“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 Ionly 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.”“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 alreadythere: 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.

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 physicallybeautiful. 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.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, becomehis, 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 fromhim.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 thingof 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.”“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 identifieseach 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 settleshim!”“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?”“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 canyouknow?” 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 heshould 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 canItell?”“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 decisionhe 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!”“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 herheart, 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.”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 forthe 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.”“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,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.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.“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.Youmust 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.”“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.“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 Ionly 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.”“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 alreadythere: 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.

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 physicallybeautiful. 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.

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, becomehis, 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 fromhim.

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 thingof 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.”

“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 identifieseach 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 settleshim!”

“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?”

“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 canyouknow?” 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 heshould 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 canItell?”

“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 decisionhe 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!”

“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 herheart, 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.”

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 forthe 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.”

“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,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.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.

“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.Youmust 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.”

“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.

“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 Ionly 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.”

“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 alreadythere: 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.

3He 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 shouldInot be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then canInot 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, forthe 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,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 hespeak 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 intoan 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!...”

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 shouldInot be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then canInot 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, forthe 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,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 hespeak 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 intoan 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!...”

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 shouldInot be happy?” she thought. “He is happy with me; he is himself with me only; he cannot be so among other people. Why then canInot 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, forthe 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,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 hespeak 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 intoan 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!...”

Chapter VIII1Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he laywithout moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’sland in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in theend to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at homeon his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-womanand the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delightof purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he couldnotcompromise and bring into harmony the elements which for ever waged war within him.When he had met Cecile and had seen her again and yet once again, he had felt himself carried wholly to the one extreme, the summit of exaltation, of pure crystal sympathy, in which the circle of his atmosphere—as he had said—glided in sympathy over hers, in a caress of pure chastity and spirituality, as two stars, spinning closer together, might mingle their atmospheresfor a moment, like breaths. What smiling happiness had not been within his reach, as it were a grace from Heaven!Then, then he had felt himself toppling down, as if he had rocked over the balancing-point; and he had longed for earthly pleasures, for great simplicity of emotion, for primitive enjoyment of life, for flesh and blood. He now remembered how, two days after his last conversation with Cecile, he had seen Emilie Hijdrecht, here, in these very rooms, where at length, stung by his neglect, she had ventured to come to him one evening, heedless of all caution. With a line of cruelty round his mouth he recalled how she had wept at his knees, how in her jealousy she had complained against Cecile, how he had ordered her to be silent and forbidden her to pronounce Cecile’s name. Then, their mad embrace, an embrace of cruelty: crueltyon her part against the man whom time after time she lost when she thought him secured for good, whom she could not understand and to whom she clung with all the violence of her brutal passion, a purely animal passion of primitive times; cruelty on his part against the woman he despised, while in his passion he almost stifled her in his embrace.2Yes, what then? How was he to find the mean between the two poles of his nature? He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he could never find it. He lacked some quality, or a certain power, necessary to find it. He could do nothing but allow himself to swing to and fro. Very well then: he would let himself swing; there was no help for it. For now, in the lassitude following his outburst of savagery, he began to experienceagain a violent longing, like one who, after a long evening passed in a ball-room heavy with the foul air of gaslight and the stifling closeness and mustiness of human breath, craves a high heaven and width of atmosphere: a violent longing for Cecile. And he smiled, glad that he knew her, that he was able to go to her, that it was now his privilege to enter into the chaste sanctuary of her environment, as into a temple; he smiled, glad that he felt his longing and proud of it, exalting himself above other men. Already he tasted the pleasure of confessing to her honestly how he had lived during the last three weeks; and already he heard her voice, though he could not distinguish the words....Jules climbed down the steps. He was disappointed that Quaerts had not followed his arranging of the weapons upon the rack and his draping of the stuffs around them. But he had quietly continuedhis work and, now that it was finished, he climbed down and came and sat on the floor quietly, with his head against the foot of the couch on which his friend lay thinking. Jules said never a word; he looked straight before him, a little sulkily, knowing that Quaerts was looking at him.“Jules,” said Quaerts.But Jules did not answer, still staring.“Tell me, Jules, what makes you like me so much?”“How should I know?” answered Jules, with thin lips.“Don’t you know?”“No. How can you know why you are fond of any one?”“You oughtn’t to be so fond of me, Jules. It’s not good.”“Very well, I will be less so in the future.”Jules rose suddenly and took his hat.He put out his hand; but Quaerts held him back with a laugh:“You see, scarcely any one is fond of me, except ... you and your father. Now I know why your father likes me, but not why you do.”“You want to know everything.”“Is that so very wrong?”“Certainly. You’ll never be satisfied. Mamma always says that no one knows anything.”“And you?”“I?... Nothing....”“How do you mean, nothing?”“I know nothing at all.... Let me go.”“Are you cross, Jules?”“No, but I have an engagement.”“Can’t you wait till I’m dressed? Then we can go together. I am going to Aunt Cecile’s.”Jules objected:“All right, provided you hurry.”Quaerts got up. He now saw the arrangement of the weapons, which he had entirely forgotten:“You’ve done it very nicely, Jules,” he said, in an admiring tone. “Thank you very much.”Jules did not answer; and Quaerts went through into his dressing-room. The lad sat down on the sofa, bolt upright, looking out at the Law Courts, across the bare trees. His eyes filled with great round tears, which ran down his cheeks. Sitting stiff and motionless, he wept.1The leading club at The Hague.

Chapter VIII1Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he laywithout moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’sland in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in theend to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at homeon his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-womanand the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delightof purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he couldnotcompromise and bring into harmony the elements which for ever waged war within him.When he had met Cecile and had seen her again and yet once again, he had felt himself carried wholly to the one extreme, the summit of exaltation, of pure crystal sympathy, in which the circle of his atmosphere—as he had said—glided in sympathy over hers, in a caress of pure chastity and spirituality, as two stars, spinning closer together, might mingle their atmospheresfor a moment, like breaths. What smiling happiness had not been within his reach, as it were a grace from Heaven!Then, then he had felt himself toppling down, as if he had rocked over the balancing-point; and he had longed for earthly pleasures, for great simplicity of emotion, for primitive enjoyment of life, for flesh and blood. He now remembered how, two days after his last conversation with Cecile, he had seen Emilie Hijdrecht, here, in these very rooms, where at length, stung by his neglect, she had ventured to come to him one evening, heedless of all caution. With a line of cruelty round his mouth he recalled how she had wept at his knees, how in her jealousy she had complained against Cecile, how he had ordered her to be silent and forbidden her to pronounce Cecile’s name. Then, their mad embrace, an embrace of cruelty: crueltyon her part against the man whom time after time she lost when she thought him secured for good, whom she could not understand and to whom she clung with all the violence of her brutal passion, a purely animal passion of primitive times; cruelty on his part against the woman he despised, while in his passion he almost stifled her in his embrace.2Yes, what then? How was he to find the mean between the two poles of his nature? He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he could never find it. He lacked some quality, or a certain power, necessary to find it. He could do nothing but allow himself to swing to and fro. Very well then: he would let himself swing; there was no help for it. For now, in the lassitude following his outburst of savagery, he began to experienceagain a violent longing, like one who, after a long evening passed in a ball-room heavy with the foul air of gaslight and the stifling closeness and mustiness of human breath, craves a high heaven and width of atmosphere: a violent longing for Cecile. And he smiled, glad that he knew her, that he was able to go to her, that it was now his privilege to enter into the chaste sanctuary of her environment, as into a temple; he smiled, glad that he felt his longing and proud of it, exalting himself above other men. Already he tasted the pleasure of confessing to her honestly how he had lived during the last three weeks; and already he heard her voice, though he could not distinguish the words....Jules climbed down the steps. He was disappointed that Quaerts had not followed his arranging of the weapons upon the rack and his draping of the stuffs around them. But he had quietly continuedhis work and, now that it was finished, he climbed down and came and sat on the floor quietly, with his head against the foot of the couch on which his friend lay thinking. Jules said never a word; he looked straight before him, a little sulkily, knowing that Quaerts was looking at him.“Jules,” said Quaerts.But Jules did not answer, still staring.“Tell me, Jules, what makes you like me so much?”“How should I know?” answered Jules, with thin lips.“Don’t you know?”“No. How can you know why you are fond of any one?”“You oughtn’t to be so fond of me, Jules. It’s not good.”“Very well, I will be less so in the future.”Jules rose suddenly and took his hat.He put out his hand; but Quaerts held him back with a laugh:“You see, scarcely any one is fond of me, except ... you and your father. Now I know why your father likes me, but not why you do.”“You want to know everything.”“Is that so very wrong?”“Certainly. You’ll never be satisfied. Mamma always says that no one knows anything.”“And you?”“I?... Nothing....”“How do you mean, nothing?”“I know nothing at all.... Let me go.”“Are you cross, Jules?”“No, but I have an engagement.”“Can’t you wait till I’m dressed? Then we can go together. I am going to Aunt Cecile’s.”Jules objected:“All right, provided you hurry.”Quaerts got up. He now saw the arrangement of the weapons, which he had entirely forgotten:“You’ve done it very nicely, Jules,” he said, in an admiring tone. “Thank you very much.”Jules did not answer; and Quaerts went through into his dressing-room. The lad sat down on the sofa, bolt upright, looking out at the Law Courts, across the bare trees. His eyes filled with great round tears, which ran down his cheeks. Sitting stiff and motionless, he wept.

1Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he laywithout moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’sland in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in theend to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at homeon his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-womanand the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delightof purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he couldnotcompromise and bring into harmony the elements which for ever waged war within him.When he had met Cecile and had seen her again and yet once again, he had felt himself carried wholly to the one extreme, the summit of exaltation, of pure crystal sympathy, in which the circle of his atmosphere—as he had said—glided in sympathy over hers, in a caress of pure chastity and spirituality, as two stars, spinning closer together, might mingle their atmospheresfor a moment, like breaths. What smiling happiness had not been within his reach, as it were a grace from Heaven!Then, then he had felt himself toppling down, as if he had rocked over the balancing-point; and he had longed for earthly pleasures, for great simplicity of emotion, for primitive enjoyment of life, for flesh and blood. He now remembered how, two days after his last conversation with Cecile, he had seen Emilie Hijdrecht, here, in these very rooms, where at length, stung by his neglect, she had ventured to come to him one evening, heedless of all caution. With a line of cruelty round his mouth he recalled how she had wept at his knees, how in her jealousy she had complained against Cecile, how he had ordered her to be silent and forbidden her to pronounce Cecile’s name. Then, their mad embrace, an embrace of cruelty: crueltyon her part against the man whom time after time she lost when she thought him secured for good, whom she could not understand and to whom she clung with all the violence of her brutal passion, a purely animal passion of primitive times; cruelty on his part against the woman he despised, while in his passion he almost stifled her in his embrace.

1

Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he laywithout moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’sland in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in theend to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at homeon his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-womanand the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delightof purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he couldnotcompromise and bring into harmony the elements which for ever waged war within him.When he had met Cecile and had seen her again and yet once again, he had felt himself carried wholly to the one extreme, the summit of exaltation, of pure crystal sympathy, in which the circle of his atmosphere—as he had said—glided in sympathy over hers, in a caress of pure chastity and spirituality, as two stars, spinning closer together, might mingle their atmospheresfor a moment, like breaths. What smiling happiness had not been within his reach, as it were a grace from Heaven!Then, then he had felt himself toppling down, as if he had rocked over the balancing-point; and he had longed for earthly pleasures, for great simplicity of emotion, for primitive enjoyment of life, for flesh and blood. He now remembered how, two days after his last conversation with Cecile, he had seen Emilie Hijdrecht, here, in these very rooms, where at length, stung by his neglect, she had ventured to come to him one evening, heedless of all caution. With a line of cruelty round his mouth he recalled how she had wept at his knees, how in her jealousy she had complained against Cecile, how he had ordered her to be silent and forbidden her to pronounce Cecile’s name. Then, their mad embrace, an embrace of cruelty: crueltyon her part against the man whom time after time she lost when she thought him secured for good, whom she could not understand and to whom she clung with all the violence of her brutal passion, a purely animal passion of primitive times; cruelty on his part against the woman he despised, while in his passion he almost stifled her in his embrace.

Quaerts lived on the Plein, above a tailor, where he occupied two small rooms furnished in the most ordinary style. He could have had much better lodgings if he chose, but he was indifferent to comfort: he never gave it a thought in his own place; when he came across it elsewhere, it did not attract him. But it distressed Jules that Quaerts should live in this fashion; and the boy had long wanted to improve the sitting-room. He was now busy hanging some trophies on an armour-rack, standing on a pair of steps, humming a tune which he remembered from some opera. But Quaerts paid no heed to what Jules was doing: he laywithout moving on the sofa, at full length, in his pyjamas, unshorn, with his eyes fixed upon the Renascence decorations of the Law Courts, tracing a background of architecture behind the leafless trees of the Plein.

“Look, Taco, will this do?” asked Jules, after hanging an Algerian sabre between two Malay creeses and draping the folds of a Javanese sarong between.

“Yes, beautifully,” replied Quaerts.

But he did not look at the rack of arms and continued gazing at the Law Courts. He lay back motionless. There was no thought in him, nothing but listless dissatisfaction with himself and consequent sadness. For three weeks he had led a life of debauch, to deaden consciousness, or perhaps he did not know precisely what: something that was in him, something that was beautiful but tedious, in ordinary life. He had begun by shooting over a friend’sland in North Brabant. It lasted a week; there were eight of them; sport in the open air, followed by sporting dinners, with not only a great deal of wine, certainly the best, but still more geneva, also of the finest, like a liqueur. Ragging-excursions on horseback in the neighbourhood; follies at a farm—the peasant-woman carried round in a barrel and locked up in the cow-house—mischievous exploits, worthy only of unruly boys and savages and ending in a summons before a magistrate, with a fine and damages. Wound up to a pitch of excitement with too much sport, too much oxygen and too much drink, five of the pack, including Quaerts, had gone on to Brussels, where one of them had a mistress. There they stayed nearly a fortnight, leading a life of continual excess, with endless champagne and larking: a wild joy of living, which, natural enough at first, had in theend to be screwed up and screwed up higher still, to make it last a couple of days longer; the last nights spent weariedly over écarté, with none but the fixed idea of winning, the exhaustion of all their violence already pulsing through their bodies, like a nervous relaxation, and their eyes gazing without expression at the cards.

During that time Quaerts had only once thought of Cecile; and he had not followed up the thought. She had no doubt arisen three or four times in his brain, as a vague image, white and transparent, an apparition which had vanished again immediately, leaving no trace of its passage. All this time too he had not written to her; and it had only once struck him that a silence of three weeks, after their last conversation, must seem strange to her. There it had remained. He was back now; he had lain three days long at homeon his bed, on his sofa, tired, feverish, dissatisfied, disgusted with everything, everything; then, one morning, remembering that it was Wednesday, he had thought of Jules and his riding-lesson.

He sent for Jules, but, too lazy to shave or dress, he remained lying where he was. And he still lay there, realizing nothing. There before him were the Law Courts, with the Privy Council adjoining. At the side he could see the Witte1and William the Silent standing on his pedestal in the middle of the Plein: that was all exceedingly interesting. And Jules was hanging up trophies: also interesting. And the most interesting of all was the stupid life he had been leading. What a tense effort to lull his boredom! Had he really amused himself during that time? No; he had made a pretence of being amused: the episode of the peasant-womanand the écarté had excited him; the sport was bad, the wine good, but he had drunk too much of it. And then the filthy champagne of that wench, at Brussels!...

Well, what then? He had absolute need of it, of a life like that, of sport and wild enjoyment; it served to balance the other thing in him, which became impossible in everyday life.

But why could he not preserve some sort of mean in both? He was perfectly well-equipped for ordinary life; and with that he possessed something in addition, something that was very beautiful in his soul: why could he not remain balanced between those two inner spheres? Why was he always tossed from one to the other, as a thing that belonged to neither? How fine he could have made his life with just the least tact, the least self-restraint! How he might have lived in a healthy delightof purified animal existence, tempered by a higher joyousness of soul! But tact, self-restraint: he had none of all this; he lived according to his impulses, always in extremes; he was incapable of half-measures. And in this lay his pride as well as his regret: his pride that he felt this or that thing “wholly,” that he was unable to compromise with his emotions; and his regret that he couldnotcompromise and bring into harmony the elements which for ever waged war within him.

When he had met Cecile and had seen her again and yet once again, he had felt himself carried wholly to the one extreme, the summit of exaltation, of pure crystal sympathy, in which the circle of his atmosphere—as he had said—glided in sympathy over hers, in a caress of pure chastity and spirituality, as two stars, spinning closer together, might mingle their atmospheresfor a moment, like breaths. What smiling happiness had not been within his reach, as it were a grace from Heaven!

Then, then he had felt himself toppling down, as if he had rocked over the balancing-point; and he had longed for earthly pleasures, for great simplicity of emotion, for primitive enjoyment of life, for flesh and blood. He now remembered how, two days after his last conversation with Cecile, he had seen Emilie Hijdrecht, here, in these very rooms, where at length, stung by his neglect, she had ventured to come to him one evening, heedless of all caution. With a line of cruelty round his mouth he recalled how she had wept at his knees, how in her jealousy she had complained against Cecile, how he had ordered her to be silent and forbidden her to pronounce Cecile’s name. Then, their mad embrace, an embrace of cruelty: crueltyon her part against the man whom time after time she lost when she thought him secured for good, whom she could not understand and to whom she clung with all the violence of her brutal passion, a purely animal passion of primitive times; cruelty on his part against the woman he despised, while in his passion he almost stifled her in his embrace.

2Yes, what then? How was he to find the mean between the two poles of his nature? He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he could never find it. He lacked some quality, or a certain power, necessary to find it. He could do nothing but allow himself to swing to and fro. Very well then: he would let himself swing; there was no help for it. For now, in the lassitude following his outburst of savagery, he began to experienceagain a violent longing, like one who, after a long evening passed in a ball-room heavy with the foul air of gaslight and the stifling closeness and mustiness of human breath, craves a high heaven and width of atmosphere: a violent longing for Cecile. And he smiled, glad that he knew her, that he was able to go to her, that it was now his privilege to enter into the chaste sanctuary of her environment, as into a temple; he smiled, glad that he felt his longing and proud of it, exalting himself above other men. Already he tasted the pleasure of confessing to her honestly how he had lived during the last three weeks; and already he heard her voice, though he could not distinguish the words....Jules climbed down the steps. He was disappointed that Quaerts had not followed his arranging of the weapons upon the rack and his draping of the stuffs around them. But he had quietly continuedhis work and, now that it was finished, he climbed down and came and sat on the floor quietly, with his head against the foot of the couch on which his friend lay thinking. Jules said never a word; he looked straight before him, a little sulkily, knowing that Quaerts was looking at him.“Jules,” said Quaerts.But Jules did not answer, still staring.“Tell me, Jules, what makes you like me so much?”“How should I know?” answered Jules, with thin lips.“Don’t you know?”“No. How can you know why you are fond of any one?”“You oughtn’t to be so fond of me, Jules. It’s not good.”“Very well, I will be less so in the future.”Jules rose suddenly and took his hat.He put out his hand; but Quaerts held him back with a laugh:“You see, scarcely any one is fond of me, except ... you and your father. Now I know why your father likes me, but not why you do.”“You want to know everything.”“Is that so very wrong?”“Certainly. You’ll never be satisfied. Mamma always says that no one knows anything.”“And you?”“I?... Nothing....”“How do you mean, nothing?”“I know nothing at all.... Let me go.”“Are you cross, Jules?”“No, but I have an engagement.”“Can’t you wait till I’m dressed? Then we can go together. I am going to Aunt Cecile’s.”Jules objected:“All right, provided you hurry.”Quaerts got up. He now saw the arrangement of the weapons, which he had entirely forgotten:“You’ve done it very nicely, Jules,” he said, in an admiring tone. “Thank you very much.”Jules did not answer; and Quaerts went through into his dressing-room. The lad sat down on the sofa, bolt upright, looking out at the Law Courts, across the bare trees. His eyes filled with great round tears, which ran down his cheeks. Sitting stiff and motionless, he wept.

2

Yes, what then? How was he to find the mean between the two poles of his nature? He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he could never find it. He lacked some quality, or a certain power, necessary to find it. He could do nothing but allow himself to swing to and fro. Very well then: he would let himself swing; there was no help for it. For now, in the lassitude following his outburst of savagery, he began to experienceagain a violent longing, like one who, after a long evening passed in a ball-room heavy with the foul air of gaslight and the stifling closeness and mustiness of human breath, craves a high heaven and width of atmosphere: a violent longing for Cecile. And he smiled, glad that he knew her, that he was able to go to her, that it was now his privilege to enter into the chaste sanctuary of her environment, as into a temple; he smiled, glad that he felt his longing and proud of it, exalting himself above other men. Already he tasted the pleasure of confessing to her honestly how he had lived during the last three weeks; and already he heard her voice, though he could not distinguish the words....Jules climbed down the steps. He was disappointed that Quaerts had not followed his arranging of the weapons upon the rack and his draping of the stuffs around them. But he had quietly continuedhis work and, now that it was finished, he climbed down and came and sat on the floor quietly, with his head against the foot of the couch on which his friend lay thinking. Jules said never a word; he looked straight before him, a little sulkily, knowing that Quaerts was looking at him.“Jules,” said Quaerts.But Jules did not answer, still staring.“Tell me, Jules, what makes you like me so much?”“How should I know?” answered Jules, with thin lips.“Don’t you know?”“No. How can you know why you are fond of any one?”“You oughtn’t to be so fond of me, Jules. It’s not good.”“Very well, I will be less so in the future.”Jules rose suddenly and took his hat.He put out his hand; but Quaerts held him back with a laugh:“You see, scarcely any one is fond of me, except ... you and your father. Now I know why your father likes me, but not why you do.”“You want to know everything.”“Is that so very wrong?”“Certainly. You’ll never be satisfied. Mamma always says that no one knows anything.”“And you?”“I?... Nothing....”“How do you mean, nothing?”“I know nothing at all.... Let me go.”“Are you cross, Jules?”“No, but I have an engagement.”“Can’t you wait till I’m dressed? Then we can go together. I am going to Aunt Cecile’s.”Jules objected:“All right, provided you hurry.”Quaerts got up. He now saw the arrangement of the weapons, which he had entirely forgotten:“You’ve done it very nicely, Jules,” he said, in an admiring tone. “Thank you very much.”Jules did not answer; and Quaerts went through into his dressing-room. The lad sat down on the sofa, bolt upright, looking out at the Law Courts, across the bare trees. His eyes filled with great round tears, which ran down his cheeks. Sitting stiff and motionless, he wept.

Yes, what then? How was he to find the mean between the two poles of his nature? He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that he could never find it. He lacked some quality, or a certain power, necessary to find it. He could do nothing but allow himself to swing to and fro. Very well then: he would let himself swing; there was no help for it. For now, in the lassitude following his outburst of savagery, he began to experienceagain a violent longing, like one who, after a long evening passed in a ball-room heavy with the foul air of gaslight and the stifling closeness and mustiness of human breath, craves a high heaven and width of atmosphere: a violent longing for Cecile. And he smiled, glad that he knew her, that he was able to go to her, that it was now his privilege to enter into the chaste sanctuary of her environment, as into a temple; he smiled, glad that he felt his longing and proud of it, exalting himself above other men. Already he tasted the pleasure of confessing to her honestly how he had lived during the last three weeks; and already he heard her voice, though he could not distinguish the words....

Jules climbed down the steps. He was disappointed that Quaerts had not followed his arranging of the weapons upon the rack and his draping of the stuffs around them. But he had quietly continuedhis work and, now that it was finished, he climbed down and came and sat on the floor quietly, with his head against the foot of the couch on which his friend lay thinking. Jules said never a word; he looked straight before him, a little sulkily, knowing that Quaerts was looking at him.

“Jules,” said Quaerts.

But Jules did not answer, still staring.

“Tell me, Jules, what makes you like me so much?”

“How should I know?” answered Jules, with thin lips.

“Don’t you know?”

“No. How can you know why you are fond of any one?”

“You oughtn’t to be so fond of me, Jules. It’s not good.”

“Very well, I will be less so in the future.”

Jules rose suddenly and took his hat.He put out his hand; but Quaerts held him back with a laugh:

“You see, scarcely any one is fond of me, except ... you and your father. Now I know why your father likes me, but not why you do.”

“You want to know everything.”

“Is that so very wrong?”

“Certainly. You’ll never be satisfied. Mamma always says that no one knows anything.”

“And you?”

“I?... Nothing....”

“How do you mean, nothing?”

“I know nothing at all.... Let me go.”

“Are you cross, Jules?”

“No, but I have an engagement.”

“Can’t you wait till I’m dressed? Then we can go together. I am going to Aunt Cecile’s.”

Jules objected:

“All right, provided you hurry.”

Quaerts got up. He now saw the arrangement of the weapons, which he had entirely forgotten:

“You’ve done it very nicely, Jules,” he said, in an admiring tone. “Thank you very much.”

Jules did not answer; and Quaerts went through into his dressing-room. The lad sat down on the sofa, bolt upright, looking out at the Law Courts, across the bare trees. His eyes filled with great round tears, which ran down his cheeks. Sitting stiff and motionless, he wept.

1The leading club at The Hague.

1The leading club at The Hague.

Chapter IX1Cecile had passed those three weeks in a state of ignorance which had filled her with pain. She had, it is true, heard through Dolf that Quaerts was away shooting, but beyond that nothing. A thrill of joy electrified her when the door behind the screen opened and she saw him enter the room. He was standing in front of her before she could recover herself; and, as she was trembling, she did not rise, but, still sitting, reached out her hand to him, her fingers quivering imperceptibly.“I have been out of town,” he began.“So I heard.”“Have you been well all this time?”“Quite well, thank you.”He noticed that she was somewhat pale, that she had a light blue shadow under her eyes and that there was lassitude in all her movements. But he came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary in this, or that perhaps she merely looked pale in the creamy whiteness of her soft, white dress, like silky wool, even as her figure became yet slighter in the constraint of the scarf about her waist, with its long white fringe falling to her feet. She was sitting alone with Christie, the child upon his footstool with his head in her lap and a picture-book on his knees.“You two are a perfect Madonna and Child,” said Quaerts.“Little Dolf has gone out to walk with his god-father,” she said, looking fondly upon her child and motioning to him gently.At this bidding the boy stood up andshyly approached Quaerts, offering him a hand. Quaerts lifted him up and set him on his knee:“How light he is!”“He is not strong,” said Cecile.“You coddle him too much.” She laughed:“Pedagogue!” she laughed. “How do I coddle him?”“I always find him nestling against your skirts. He must come with me one of these days: I should make him do some gymnastics.”“Jules horse-riding and Christie gymnastics!” she exclaimed.“Yes ... sport, in fact!” he answered, with a meaning look of fun.She glanced back at him; and sympathy smiled from the depths of her gold-grey eyes. He felt thoroughly happy and, with the child still upon his knees, said:“I have come to confess to you ... Madonna!”Then, as though startled, he put the child away from him.“To confess?”“Yes.... There, Christie, go back to Mamma; I mustn’t keep you by me any longer.”“Very well,” said Christie, with great, wondering eyes, and caught hold of the cord of Quaerts’ eyeglass.“The Child would forgive too easily,” said Quaerts.“And I, have I anything to forgive you?” she asked.“I shall be only too happy if you will see it in that light.”“Then begin your confession.”“But the Child ...” he hesitated.Cecile stood up; she took the child, kissed him and sat him on a stool by thewindow with his picture-book. Then she came back to the sofa:“He will not hear....”And Quaerts began the story, choosing his words: he spoke of the shooting, of the ragging-parties and the peasant-woman and of Brussels. She listened attentively, with dread in her eyes at the violence of such a life, the echo of which reverberated in his words, even though the echo was softened by his reverence.“And is all this a sin calling for absolution?” she asked, when he had finished.“Is it not?”“I am no Madonna, but ... a woman with fairly emancipated views. If you were happy in what you did, it was no sin, for happiness is good.... Were you happy, I ask you? For in that case what you did was ... good.”“Happy?” he asked.“Yes.”“No.... Therefore I have sinned, sinned against myself, have I not? Forgive me ... Madonna.”She was troubled at the sound of his voice, which, gently broken, wrapped her about as with a spell; she was troubled to see him sitting there, filling with his body, his personality, his existence a place in her room, beside her. In a single second she lived through hours, feeling her calm love lying heavy within her, like a sweet weight; feeling a longing to throw her arms about him and tell him that she worshipped him; feeling also an intense sorrow at what he had admitted, that once again he had been unhappy. Hardly able to control herself in her compassion, she rose, moved towards him and laid her hand upon his shoulder:“Tell me, do you mean all this? Isit all true? Is it true that you have been living as you say and yet have not been happy?”“Perfectly true, on my soul.”“Then why did you do it?”“I couldn’t help it.”“You were unable to force yourself to be more moderate?”“Absolutely.”“Then I should like to teach you.”“And I should not like to learn, fromyou. For it is and always will be my best happiness to be immoderate also where you are concerned, immoderate in the life of my real self, my soul, just as I have now been immoderate in the life of my apparent self.”Her eyes grew dim; she shook her head, her hand still upon his shoulder:“That is not right,” she said, in deep distress.“It is a joy ... for both those beings. I have to be like that, I have to be immoderate: they both demand it.”“But that is not right,” she insisted. “Pure enjoyment ...”“The lowest, but also the highest....”A shiver passed through her, a deadly fear for him.“No, no,” she persisted. “Don’t think that. Don’t do it. Neither the one nor the other. Really, it is all wrong. Pure joy, unbridled joy, even the highest, is not good. In that way you force your life. When you speak so, I am afraid for your sake. Try to recover moderation. You have so many possibilities of being happy.”“Oh, yes!...”“Yes, but what I mean is that you must not be fanatical. And ... and also, for the love of God, don’t run quite so madly after pleasure.”He looked up at her; he saw her beseeching him with her eyes, with the expression of her face, with her whole attitude, as she stood bending slightly forward. Hesawher beseeching him, even as heheardher; and then he knew that she loved him. A feeling of bright rapture came upon him, as though something high were descending upon him to guide him. He did not stir—he felt her hand thrilling at his shoulder—afraid lest with the smallest movement he should drive that rapture away. It did not occur to him for a moment to speak a word of tenderness to her or to take her in his arms and press her to him: she was so profoundly transfigured in his eyes that any such profane desire remained far removed from him. And yet he felt at that moment that he loved her, but as he had never yet loved any one before, so completely and exclusively, with the noblest elements that liehidden away in the soul, often unknown even to itself. He felt that he loved her with new-born feelings of frank youth and fresh vigour and pure unselfishness. And it seemed to him that it was all a dream of something which did not exist, a dream lightly woven about him, a web of sunbeams.“Madonna!” he whispered. “Forgive me....”“Promise then....”“Willingly, but I shall not be able to keep my promise. I am weak....”“No.”“Ah, I am! But I give you my promise; and I promise also to try my utmost to keep it. Will you forgive me now?”She nodded to him; her smile fell on him like a ray of sunlight. Then she went to the child, took it in her arms and brought it to Quaerts:“Put your arms round his neck, Christie, and give him a kiss.”He took the child from her; it threw its little arms about his neck and kissed him on the forehead.“The Madonna forgives me ... and the Child!” he whispered.2They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in theNieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move withthe yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimesthey ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedywhich makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”“Then don’t analyse it.”“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.And they were both silent, their eyesexpanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.

Chapter IX1Cecile had passed those three weeks in a state of ignorance which had filled her with pain. She had, it is true, heard through Dolf that Quaerts was away shooting, but beyond that nothing. A thrill of joy electrified her when the door behind the screen opened and she saw him enter the room. He was standing in front of her before she could recover herself; and, as she was trembling, she did not rise, but, still sitting, reached out her hand to him, her fingers quivering imperceptibly.“I have been out of town,” he began.“So I heard.”“Have you been well all this time?”“Quite well, thank you.”He noticed that she was somewhat pale, that she had a light blue shadow under her eyes and that there was lassitude in all her movements. But he came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary in this, or that perhaps she merely looked pale in the creamy whiteness of her soft, white dress, like silky wool, even as her figure became yet slighter in the constraint of the scarf about her waist, with its long white fringe falling to her feet. She was sitting alone with Christie, the child upon his footstool with his head in her lap and a picture-book on his knees.“You two are a perfect Madonna and Child,” said Quaerts.“Little Dolf has gone out to walk with his god-father,” she said, looking fondly upon her child and motioning to him gently.At this bidding the boy stood up andshyly approached Quaerts, offering him a hand. Quaerts lifted him up and set him on his knee:“How light he is!”“He is not strong,” said Cecile.“You coddle him too much.” She laughed:“Pedagogue!” she laughed. “How do I coddle him?”“I always find him nestling against your skirts. He must come with me one of these days: I should make him do some gymnastics.”“Jules horse-riding and Christie gymnastics!” she exclaimed.“Yes ... sport, in fact!” he answered, with a meaning look of fun.She glanced back at him; and sympathy smiled from the depths of her gold-grey eyes. He felt thoroughly happy and, with the child still upon his knees, said:“I have come to confess to you ... Madonna!”Then, as though startled, he put the child away from him.“To confess?”“Yes.... There, Christie, go back to Mamma; I mustn’t keep you by me any longer.”“Very well,” said Christie, with great, wondering eyes, and caught hold of the cord of Quaerts’ eyeglass.“The Child would forgive too easily,” said Quaerts.“And I, have I anything to forgive you?” she asked.“I shall be only too happy if you will see it in that light.”“Then begin your confession.”“But the Child ...” he hesitated.Cecile stood up; she took the child, kissed him and sat him on a stool by thewindow with his picture-book. Then she came back to the sofa:“He will not hear....”And Quaerts began the story, choosing his words: he spoke of the shooting, of the ragging-parties and the peasant-woman and of Brussels. She listened attentively, with dread in her eyes at the violence of such a life, the echo of which reverberated in his words, even though the echo was softened by his reverence.“And is all this a sin calling for absolution?” she asked, when he had finished.“Is it not?”“I am no Madonna, but ... a woman with fairly emancipated views. If you were happy in what you did, it was no sin, for happiness is good.... Were you happy, I ask you? For in that case what you did was ... good.”“Happy?” he asked.“Yes.”“No.... Therefore I have sinned, sinned against myself, have I not? Forgive me ... Madonna.”She was troubled at the sound of his voice, which, gently broken, wrapped her about as with a spell; she was troubled to see him sitting there, filling with his body, his personality, his existence a place in her room, beside her. In a single second she lived through hours, feeling her calm love lying heavy within her, like a sweet weight; feeling a longing to throw her arms about him and tell him that she worshipped him; feeling also an intense sorrow at what he had admitted, that once again he had been unhappy. Hardly able to control herself in her compassion, she rose, moved towards him and laid her hand upon his shoulder:“Tell me, do you mean all this? Isit all true? Is it true that you have been living as you say and yet have not been happy?”“Perfectly true, on my soul.”“Then why did you do it?”“I couldn’t help it.”“You were unable to force yourself to be more moderate?”“Absolutely.”“Then I should like to teach you.”“And I should not like to learn, fromyou. For it is and always will be my best happiness to be immoderate also where you are concerned, immoderate in the life of my real self, my soul, just as I have now been immoderate in the life of my apparent self.”Her eyes grew dim; she shook her head, her hand still upon his shoulder:“That is not right,” she said, in deep distress.“It is a joy ... for both those beings. I have to be like that, I have to be immoderate: they both demand it.”“But that is not right,” she insisted. “Pure enjoyment ...”“The lowest, but also the highest....”A shiver passed through her, a deadly fear for him.“No, no,” she persisted. “Don’t think that. Don’t do it. Neither the one nor the other. Really, it is all wrong. Pure joy, unbridled joy, even the highest, is not good. In that way you force your life. When you speak so, I am afraid for your sake. Try to recover moderation. You have so many possibilities of being happy.”“Oh, yes!...”“Yes, but what I mean is that you must not be fanatical. And ... and also, for the love of God, don’t run quite so madly after pleasure.”He looked up at her; he saw her beseeching him with her eyes, with the expression of her face, with her whole attitude, as she stood bending slightly forward. Hesawher beseeching him, even as heheardher; and then he knew that she loved him. A feeling of bright rapture came upon him, as though something high were descending upon him to guide him. He did not stir—he felt her hand thrilling at his shoulder—afraid lest with the smallest movement he should drive that rapture away. It did not occur to him for a moment to speak a word of tenderness to her or to take her in his arms and press her to him: she was so profoundly transfigured in his eyes that any such profane desire remained far removed from him. And yet he felt at that moment that he loved her, but as he had never yet loved any one before, so completely and exclusively, with the noblest elements that liehidden away in the soul, often unknown even to itself. He felt that he loved her with new-born feelings of frank youth and fresh vigour and pure unselfishness. And it seemed to him that it was all a dream of something which did not exist, a dream lightly woven about him, a web of sunbeams.“Madonna!” he whispered. “Forgive me....”“Promise then....”“Willingly, but I shall not be able to keep my promise. I am weak....”“No.”“Ah, I am! But I give you my promise; and I promise also to try my utmost to keep it. Will you forgive me now?”She nodded to him; her smile fell on him like a ray of sunlight. Then she went to the child, took it in her arms and brought it to Quaerts:“Put your arms round his neck, Christie, and give him a kiss.”He took the child from her; it threw its little arms about his neck and kissed him on the forehead.“The Madonna forgives me ... and the Child!” he whispered.2They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in theNieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move withthe yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimesthey ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedywhich makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”“Then don’t analyse it.”“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.And they were both silent, their eyesexpanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.

1Cecile had passed those three weeks in a state of ignorance which had filled her with pain. She had, it is true, heard through Dolf that Quaerts was away shooting, but beyond that nothing. A thrill of joy electrified her when the door behind the screen opened and she saw him enter the room. He was standing in front of her before she could recover herself; and, as she was trembling, she did not rise, but, still sitting, reached out her hand to him, her fingers quivering imperceptibly.“I have been out of town,” he began.“So I heard.”“Have you been well all this time?”“Quite well, thank you.”He noticed that she was somewhat pale, that she had a light blue shadow under her eyes and that there was lassitude in all her movements. But he came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary in this, or that perhaps she merely looked pale in the creamy whiteness of her soft, white dress, like silky wool, even as her figure became yet slighter in the constraint of the scarf about her waist, with its long white fringe falling to her feet. She was sitting alone with Christie, the child upon his footstool with his head in her lap and a picture-book on his knees.“You two are a perfect Madonna and Child,” said Quaerts.“Little Dolf has gone out to walk with his god-father,” she said, looking fondly upon her child and motioning to him gently.At this bidding the boy stood up andshyly approached Quaerts, offering him a hand. Quaerts lifted him up and set him on his knee:“How light he is!”“He is not strong,” said Cecile.“You coddle him too much.” She laughed:“Pedagogue!” she laughed. “How do I coddle him?”“I always find him nestling against your skirts. He must come with me one of these days: I should make him do some gymnastics.”“Jules horse-riding and Christie gymnastics!” she exclaimed.“Yes ... sport, in fact!” he answered, with a meaning look of fun.She glanced back at him; and sympathy smiled from the depths of her gold-grey eyes. He felt thoroughly happy and, with the child still upon his knees, said:“I have come to confess to you ... Madonna!”Then, as though startled, he put the child away from him.“To confess?”“Yes.... There, Christie, go back to Mamma; I mustn’t keep you by me any longer.”“Very well,” said Christie, with great, wondering eyes, and caught hold of the cord of Quaerts’ eyeglass.“The Child would forgive too easily,” said Quaerts.“And I, have I anything to forgive you?” she asked.“I shall be only too happy if you will see it in that light.”“Then begin your confession.”“But the Child ...” he hesitated.Cecile stood up; she took the child, kissed him and sat him on a stool by thewindow with his picture-book. Then she came back to the sofa:“He will not hear....”And Quaerts began the story, choosing his words: he spoke of the shooting, of the ragging-parties and the peasant-woman and of Brussels. She listened attentively, with dread in her eyes at the violence of such a life, the echo of which reverberated in his words, even though the echo was softened by his reverence.“And is all this a sin calling for absolution?” she asked, when he had finished.“Is it not?”“I am no Madonna, but ... a woman with fairly emancipated views. If you were happy in what you did, it was no sin, for happiness is good.... Were you happy, I ask you? For in that case what you did was ... good.”“Happy?” he asked.“Yes.”“No.... Therefore I have sinned, sinned against myself, have I not? Forgive me ... Madonna.”She was troubled at the sound of his voice, which, gently broken, wrapped her about as with a spell; she was troubled to see him sitting there, filling with his body, his personality, his existence a place in her room, beside her. In a single second she lived through hours, feeling her calm love lying heavy within her, like a sweet weight; feeling a longing to throw her arms about him and tell him that she worshipped him; feeling also an intense sorrow at what he had admitted, that once again he had been unhappy. Hardly able to control herself in her compassion, she rose, moved towards him and laid her hand upon his shoulder:“Tell me, do you mean all this? Isit all true? Is it true that you have been living as you say and yet have not been happy?”“Perfectly true, on my soul.”“Then why did you do it?”“I couldn’t help it.”“You were unable to force yourself to be more moderate?”“Absolutely.”“Then I should like to teach you.”“And I should not like to learn, fromyou. For it is and always will be my best happiness to be immoderate also where you are concerned, immoderate in the life of my real self, my soul, just as I have now been immoderate in the life of my apparent self.”Her eyes grew dim; she shook her head, her hand still upon his shoulder:“That is not right,” she said, in deep distress.“It is a joy ... for both those beings. I have to be like that, I have to be immoderate: they both demand it.”“But that is not right,” she insisted. “Pure enjoyment ...”“The lowest, but also the highest....”A shiver passed through her, a deadly fear for him.“No, no,” she persisted. “Don’t think that. Don’t do it. Neither the one nor the other. Really, it is all wrong. Pure joy, unbridled joy, even the highest, is not good. In that way you force your life. When you speak so, I am afraid for your sake. Try to recover moderation. You have so many possibilities of being happy.”“Oh, yes!...”“Yes, but what I mean is that you must not be fanatical. And ... and also, for the love of God, don’t run quite so madly after pleasure.”He looked up at her; he saw her beseeching him with her eyes, with the expression of her face, with her whole attitude, as she stood bending slightly forward. Hesawher beseeching him, even as heheardher; and then he knew that she loved him. A feeling of bright rapture came upon him, as though something high were descending upon him to guide him. He did not stir—he felt her hand thrilling at his shoulder—afraid lest with the smallest movement he should drive that rapture away. It did not occur to him for a moment to speak a word of tenderness to her or to take her in his arms and press her to him: she was so profoundly transfigured in his eyes that any such profane desire remained far removed from him. And yet he felt at that moment that he loved her, but as he had never yet loved any one before, so completely and exclusively, with the noblest elements that liehidden away in the soul, often unknown even to itself. He felt that he loved her with new-born feelings of frank youth and fresh vigour and pure unselfishness. And it seemed to him that it was all a dream of something which did not exist, a dream lightly woven about him, a web of sunbeams.“Madonna!” he whispered. “Forgive me....”“Promise then....”“Willingly, but I shall not be able to keep my promise. I am weak....”“No.”“Ah, I am! But I give you my promise; and I promise also to try my utmost to keep it. Will you forgive me now?”She nodded to him; her smile fell on him like a ray of sunlight. Then she went to the child, took it in her arms and brought it to Quaerts:“Put your arms round his neck, Christie, and give him a kiss.”He took the child from her; it threw its little arms about his neck and kissed him on the forehead.“The Madonna forgives me ... and the Child!” he whispered.

1

Cecile had passed those three weeks in a state of ignorance which had filled her with pain. She had, it is true, heard through Dolf that Quaerts was away shooting, but beyond that nothing. A thrill of joy electrified her when the door behind the screen opened and she saw him enter the room. He was standing in front of her before she could recover herself; and, as she was trembling, she did not rise, but, still sitting, reached out her hand to him, her fingers quivering imperceptibly.“I have been out of town,” he began.“So I heard.”“Have you been well all this time?”“Quite well, thank you.”He noticed that she was somewhat pale, that she had a light blue shadow under her eyes and that there was lassitude in all her movements. But he came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary in this, or that perhaps she merely looked pale in the creamy whiteness of her soft, white dress, like silky wool, even as her figure became yet slighter in the constraint of the scarf about her waist, with its long white fringe falling to her feet. She was sitting alone with Christie, the child upon his footstool with his head in her lap and a picture-book on his knees.“You two are a perfect Madonna and Child,” said Quaerts.“Little Dolf has gone out to walk with his god-father,” she said, looking fondly upon her child and motioning to him gently.At this bidding the boy stood up andshyly approached Quaerts, offering him a hand. Quaerts lifted him up and set him on his knee:“How light he is!”“He is not strong,” said Cecile.“You coddle him too much.” She laughed:“Pedagogue!” she laughed. “How do I coddle him?”“I always find him nestling against your skirts. He must come with me one of these days: I should make him do some gymnastics.”“Jules horse-riding and Christie gymnastics!” she exclaimed.“Yes ... sport, in fact!” he answered, with a meaning look of fun.She glanced back at him; and sympathy smiled from the depths of her gold-grey eyes. He felt thoroughly happy and, with the child still upon his knees, said:“I have come to confess to you ... Madonna!”Then, as though startled, he put the child away from him.“To confess?”“Yes.... There, Christie, go back to Mamma; I mustn’t keep you by me any longer.”“Very well,” said Christie, with great, wondering eyes, and caught hold of the cord of Quaerts’ eyeglass.“The Child would forgive too easily,” said Quaerts.“And I, have I anything to forgive you?” she asked.“I shall be only too happy if you will see it in that light.”“Then begin your confession.”“But the Child ...” he hesitated.Cecile stood up; she took the child, kissed him and sat him on a stool by thewindow with his picture-book. Then she came back to the sofa:“He will not hear....”And Quaerts began the story, choosing his words: he spoke of the shooting, of the ragging-parties and the peasant-woman and of Brussels. She listened attentively, with dread in her eyes at the violence of such a life, the echo of which reverberated in his words, even though the echo was softened by his reverence.“And is all this a sin calling for absolution?” she asked, when he had finished.“Is it not?”“I am no Madonna, but ... a woman with fairly emancipated views. If you were happy in what you did, it was no sin, for happiness is good.... Were you happy, I ask you? For in that case what you did was ... good.”“Happy?” he asked.“Yes.”“No.... Therefore I have sinned, sinned against myself, have I not? Forgive me ... Madonna.”She was troubled at the sound of his voice, which, gently broken, wrapped her about as with a spell; she was troubled to see him sitting there, filling with his body, his personality, his existence a place in her room, beside her. In a single second she lived through hours, feeling her calm love lying heavy within her, like a sweet weight; feeling a longing to throw her arms about him and tell him that she worshipped him; feeling also an intense sorrow at what he had admitted, that once again he had been unhappy. Hardly able to control herself in her compassion, she rose, moved towards him and laid her hand upon his shoulder:“Tell me, do you mean all this? Isit all true? Is it true that you have been living as you say and yet have not been happy?”“Perfectly true, on my soul.”“Then why did you do it?”“I couldn’t help it.”“You were unable to force yourself to be more moderate?”“Absolutely.”“Then I should like to teach you.”“And I should not like to learn, fromyou. For it is and always will be my best happiness to be immoderate also where you are concerned, immoderate in the life of my real self, my soul, just as I have now been immoderate in the life of my apparent self.”Her eyes grew dim; she shook her head, her hand still upon his shoulder:“That is not right,” she said, in deep distress.“It is a joy ... for both those beings. I have to be like that, I have to be immoderate: they both demand it.”“But that is not right,” she insisted. “Pure enjoyment ...”“The lowest, but also the highest....”A shiver passed through her, a deadly fear for him.“No, no,” she persisted. “Don’t think that. Don’t do it. Neither the one nor the other. Really, it is all wrong. Pure joy, unbridled joy, even the highest, is not good. In that way you force your life. When you speak so, I am afraid for your sake. Try to recover moderation. You have so many possibilities of being happy.”“Oh, yes!...”“Yes, but what I mean is that you must not be fanatical. And ... and also, for the love of God, don’t run quite so madly after pleasure.”He looked up at her; he saw her beseeching him with her eyes, with the expression of her face, with her whole attitude, as she stood bending slightly forward. Hesawher beseeching him, even as heheardher; and then he knew that she loved him. A feeling of bright rapture came upon him, as though something high were descending upon him to guide him. He did not stir—he felt her hand thrilling at his shoulder—afraid lest with the smallest movement he should drive that rapture away. It did not occur to him for a moment to speak a word of tenderness to her or to take her in his arms and press her to him: she was so profoundly transfigured in his eyes that any such profane desire remained far removed from him. And yet he felt at that moment that he loved her, but as he had never yet loved any one before, so completely and exclusively, with the noblest elements that liehidden away in the soul, often unknown even to itself. He felt that he loved her with new-born feelings of frank youth and fresh vigour and pure unselfishness. And it seemed to him that it was all a dream of something which did not exist, a dream lightly woven about him, a web of sunbeams.“Madonna!” he whispered. “Forgive me....”“Promise then....”“Willingly, but I shall not be able to keep my promise. I am weak....”“No.”“Ah, I am! But I give you my promise; and I promise also to try my utmost to keep it. Will you forgive me now?”She nodded to him; her smile fell on him like a ray of sunlight. Then she went to the child, took it in her arms and brought it to Quaerts:“Put your arms round his neck, Christie, and give him a kiss.”He took the child from her; it threw its little arms about his neck and kissed him on the forehead.“The Madonna forgives me ... and the Child!” he whispered.

Cecile had passed those three weeks in a state of ignorance which had filled her with pain. She had, it is true, heard through Dolf that Quaerts was away shooting, but beyond that nothing. A thrill of joy electrified her when the door behind the screen opened and she saw him enter the room. He was standing in front of her before she could recover herself; and, as she was trembling, she did not rise, but, still sitting, reached out her hand to him, her fingers quivering imperceptibly.

“I have been out of town,” he began.

“So I heard.”

“Have you been well all this time?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

He noticed that she was somewhat pale, that she had a light blue shadow under her eyes and that there was lassitude in all her movements. But he came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary in this, or that perhaps she merely looked pale in the creamy whiteness of her soft, white dress, like silky wool, even as her figure became yet slighter in the constraint of the scarf about her waist, with its long white fringe falling to her feet. She was sitting alone with Christie, the child upon his footstool with his head in her lap and a picture-book on his knees.

“You two are a perfect Madonna and Child,” said Quaerts.

“Little Dolf has gone out to walk with his god-father,” she said, looking fondly upon her child and motioning to him gently.

At this bidding the boy stood up andshyly approached Quaerts, offering him a hand. Quaerts lifted him up and set him on his knee:

“How light he is!”

“He is not strong,” said Cecile.

“You coddle him too much.” She laughed:

“Pedagogue!” she laughed. “How do I coddle him?”

“I always find him nestling against your skirts. He must come with me one of these days: I should make him do some gymnastics.”

“Jules horse-riding and Christie gymnastics!” she exclaimed.

“Yes ... sport, in fact!” he answered, with a meaning look of fun.

She glanced back at him; and sympathy smiled from the depths of her gold-grey eyes. He felt thoroughly happy and, with the child still upon his knees, said:

“I have come to confess to you ... Madonna!”

Then, as though startled, he put the child away from him.

“To confess?”

“Yes.... There, Christie, go back to Mamma; I mustn’t keep you by me any longer.”

“Very well,” said Christie, with great, wondering eyes, and caught hold of the cord of Quaerts’ eyeglass.

“The Child would forgive too easily,” said Quaerts.

“And I, have I anything to forgive you?” she asked.

“I shall be only too happy if you will see it in that light.”

“Then begin your confession.”

“But the Child ...” he hesitated.

Cecile stood up; she took the child, kissed him and sat him on a stool by thewindow with his picture-book. Then she came back to the sofa:

“He will not hear....”

And Quaerts began the story, choosing his words: he spoke of the shooting, of the ragging-parties and the peasant-woman and of Brussels. She listened attentively, with dread in her eyes at the violence of such a life, the echo of which reverberated in his words, even though the echo was softened by his reverence.

“And is all this a sin calling for absolution?” she asked, when he had finished.

“Is it not?”

“I am no Madonna, but ... a woman with fairly emancipated views. If you were happy in what you did, it was no sin, for happiness is good.... Were you happy, I ask you? For in that case what you did was ... good.”

“Happy?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“No.... Therefore I have sinned, sinned against myself, have I not? Forgive me ... Madonna.”

She was troubled at the sound of his voice, which, gently broken, wrapped her about as with a spell; she was troubled to see him sitting there, filling with his body, his personality, his existence a place in her room, beside her. In a single second she lived through hours, feeling her calm love lying heavy within her, like a sweet weight; feeling a longing to throw her arms about him and tell him that she worshipped him; feeling also an intense sorrow at what he had admitted, that once again he had been unhappy. Hardly able to control herself in her compassion, she rose, moved towards him and laid her hand upon his shoulder:

“Tell me, do you mean all this? Isit all true? Is it true that you have been living as you say and yet have not been happy?”

“Perfectly true, on my soul.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“You were unable to force yourself to be more moderate?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I should like to teach you.”

“And I should not like to learn, fromyou. For it is and always will be my best happiness to be immoderate also where you are concerned, immoderate in the life of my real self, my soul, just as I have now been immoderate in the life of my apparent self.”

Her eyes grew dim; she shook her head, her hand still upon his shoulder:

“That is not right,” she said, in deep distress.

“It is a joy ... for both those beings. I have to be like that, I have to be immoderate: they both demand it.”

“But that is not right,” she insisted. “Pure enjoyment ...”

“The lowest, but also the highest....”

A shiver passed through her, a deadly fear for him.

“No, no,” she persisted. “Don’t think that. Don’t do it. Neither the one nor the other. Really, it is all wrong. Pure joy, unbridled joy, even the highest, is not good. In that way you force your life. When you speak so, I am afraid for your sake. Try to recover moderation. You have so many possibilities of being happy.”

“Oh, yes!...”

“Yes, but what I mean is that you must not be fanatical. And ... and also, for the love of God, don’t run quite so madly after pleasure.”

He looked up at her; he saw her beseeching him with her eyes, with the expression of her face, with her whole attitude, as she stood bending slightly forward. Hesawher beseeching him, even as heheardher; and then he knew that she loved him. A feeling of bright rapture came upon him, as though something high were descending upon him to guide him. He did not stir—he felt her hand thrilling at his shoulder—afraid lest with the smallest movement he should drive that rapture away. It did not occur to him for a moment to speak a word of tenderness to her or to take her in his arms and press her to him: she was so profoundly transfigured in his eyes that any such profane desire remained far removed from him. And yet he felt at that moment that he loved her, but as he had never yet loved any one before, so completely and exclusively, with the noblest elements that liehidden away in the soul, often unknown even to itself. He felt that he loved her with new-born feelings of frank youth and fresh vigour and pure unselfishness. And it seemed to him that it was all a dream of something which did not exist, a dream lightly woven about him, a web of sunbeams.

“Madonna!” he whispered. “Forgive me....”

“Promise then....”

“Willingly, but I shall not be able to keep my promise. I am weak....”

“No.”

“Ah, I am! But I give you my promise; and I promise also to try my utmost to keep it. Will you forgive me now?”

She nodded to him; her smile fell on him like a ray of sunlight. Then she went to the child, took it in her arms and brought it to Quaerts:

“Put your arms round his neck, Christie, and give him a kiss.”

He took the child from her; it threw its little arms about his neck and kissed him on the forehead.

“The Madonna forgives me ... and the Child!” he whispered.

2They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in theNieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move withthe yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimesthey ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedywhich makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”“Then don’t analyse it.”“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.And they were both silent, their eyesexpanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.

2

They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in theNieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move withthe yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimesthey ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedywhich makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”“Then don’t analyse it.”“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.And they were both silent, their eyesexpanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.

They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in theNieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move withthe yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimesthey ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.

“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”

“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedywhich makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”

“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”

She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.

It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”

“Then don’t analyse it.”

“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”

“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.

“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”

“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”

She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.

“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.

And they were both silent, their eyesexpanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.

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