"Throw it off! Were you ever in love with a woman?"
"Certainly."
"Then you must know something of it— But you could never love any one much; it is not in your nature. You love yourself too well."
"That may be; but at any rate I love you, and I can not bear to see you thus, Frank. Get over it! They seem to have taken the whole business so ill that there is nothing more to be done. I wish you would only see that, and submit to the inevitable. Try to live for something else. Can there be no other woman in the world for you? Perhaps there is another. A man does not perish so for love. You are not a girl—girls do so."
He gazed at Frank with such a magnetic light in his eyes that Westhove fancied there was a great truth in his words; and Bertie's last reproof reminded him of his vacillation, his miserable weakness, which lay beneath his manly and powerful exterior like an insecure foundation. Still he clung to his passionate longings, his vehement craving for the happiness he had lost.
"You can not possibly judge of the matter," he retorted impatiently, trying to escape from Van Maeren's eye. "You never did love a woman, though you may say so. Why should not everything come right again? What has happened after all? What have I done? I fell into a violent, vulgar rage? What then? Is that so unpardonable in the person you love? But perhaps —I say, can I have addressed the letters wrongly?"
During a few seconds there was a weight of silence in the room, an atmosphere of lead. Then Van Maeren said—and his voice had a tender, coaxing tone:
"If you had written but once, I might think it possible; but three letters, to the same house—it is scarcely possible."
"I will go myself and call," said Westhove. "Yes, yes, I will go myself."
"What are you saying?" asked Bertie dreamily. He was still under the influence of that heavy moral atmosphere; he had not quite understood, not grasped the idea. "What was it you said?" he repeated.
"I shall go myself and call at the house," Frank reiterated.
"At what house? Where?"
"Why, at the Rhodeses'—on Eva. Are you daft?"
But Bertie rose to his feet, and his eyes glittered in his pale face like black diamonds with a hundred facets.
"What to do there?" he said with a convulsive effort in his throat to keep his voice calm
"To talk to her and set matters straight; I can not bear it. It has gone on too long."
'Tou are a fool!" said Van Maeren shortly.
"Why am I a fool?"
"Why are you a fool? You have not a grain of self-respect. Do you really think of going there?"
"Yes, of course."
"I consider it absurd," said Bertie.
"All right," said Frank, "pray think so. I myself can see that it is very weak of me. But, good God! I can hold out no longer. I love her so; I was so happy; life was so sweet; and now; now, by my own fault! I do not care what you think it. Absurd or not, I mean to go all the same."
In his distress of mind he had thrown himself into a chair, and every muscle of his features was quivering with agitation. But he went on;
"I do not know what it is that I feel; I am so unhappy, so deeply, deeply wretched. Never in my life had I known what it was to feel so content, in such harmonious equilibrium of soul as when I was with Eva; at least so it seems to me now. And now it is all at an end, and everything seems aimless. I no longer know why I live and move and eat and have my being! Why should I take all that trouble, and then have this misery into the bargain? I might just as well be dead. You see, that is why I mean to call there. And if things do not come right then, well, I shall make an end of myself! Yes, yes, I shall make an end of myself."
Crushed by the burden of life, he lay back in his chair, with his features set, his great limbs stretched out in their useless strength, all his power undermined by the mysterious inertia which gnawed it away like a worm. Before him stood Van Maeren, drawn to his full height in the energy of despair, and his flashing eyes darting sparks of fire. He laid his tremulous hands on Westhove's shoulders, feeling their massive breadth, heavy and strong. A reaction electrified him with something like defiance; he scorned this man of might in his love-sickness. But above all, oh, above all, he felt himself being dragged down to the lowest deep; and it was with the tenacity of a parasitic growth that he clung to Frank, setting his fingers into his shoulders.
"Frank," he began, almost hoarsely, "just listen to me. You are making yourself ill. You talk like a fool, and then you cry out just like a baby. You must get over it. Show a little more pluck. Do not mar your whole life by these foolish lamentations. And what about, when all is said and done, what about? All because a girl has ceased to love you. Do you place your highest hopes of happiness in a girl? They are creatures without brains or heart; superficial and vain, whipped up to a froth—mere windy nothingness. And you would kill yourself for that? Heaven above, man!
