“The only other place I know is Paris,” she said, “and I can’t stand that.”
She looked with her wide, steady eyes full at Loerke. He lowered his head and averted his face.
“Paris, no!” he said. “Between the réligion d’amour, and the latest ’ism, and the new turning to Jesus, one had better ride on a carrousel all day. But come to Dresden. I have a studio there—I can give you work—oh, that would be easy enough. I haven’t seen any of your things, but I believe in you. Come to Dresden—that is a fine town to be in, and as good a life as you can expect of a town. You have everything there, without the foolishness of Paris or the beer of Munich.”
He sat and looked at her, coldly. What she liked about him was that he spoke to her simple and flat, as to himself. He was a fellow craftsman, a fellow being to her, first.
“No—Paris,” he resumed, “it makes me sick. Pah—l’amour. I detest it. L’amour, l’amore, die Liebe—I detest it in every language. Women and love, there is no greater tedium,” he cried.
She was slightly offended. And yet, this was her own basic feeling. Men, and love—there was no greater tedium.
“I think the same,” she said.
“A bore,” he repeated. “What does it matter whether I wear this hat or another. So love. I needn’t wear a hat at all, only for convenience. Neither need I love except for convenience. I tell you what, gnädige Frau—” and he leaned towards her—then he made a quick, odd gesture, as of striking something aside—“gnädige Fräulein, never mind—I tell you what, I would give everything, everything, all your love, for a little companionship in intelligence—” his eyes flickered darkly, evilly at her. “You understand?” he asked, with a faint smile. “It wouldn’t matter if she were a hundred years old, a thousand—it would be all the same to me, so that she can understand.” He shut his eyes with a little snap.
Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her good looking, then? Suddenly she laughed.
“I shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that!” she said. “I am ugly enough, aren’t I?”
He looked at her with an artist’s sudden, critical, estimating eye.
“You are beautiful,” he said, “and I am glad of it. But it isn’t that—it isn’t that,” he cried, with emphasis that flattered her. “It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind of understanding. For me, I am little, chétif, insignificant. Good! Do not ask me to be strong and handsome, then. But it is the me—” he put his fingers to his mouth, oddly—“it is the me that is looking for a mistress, and my me is waiting for the thee of the mistress, for the match to my particular intelligence. You understand?”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand.”
“As for the other, this amour—” he made a gesture, dashing his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome—“it is unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether I drink white wine this evening, or whether I drink nothing? It does not matter, it does not matter. So this love, this amour, this baiser. Yes or no, soit ou soit pas, today, tomorrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no more than the white wine.”
He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate negation. Gudrun watched him steadily. She had gone pale.
Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own.
“That is true,” she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, “that is true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.”
He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he nodded, a little sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made not the lightest response. And they sat in silence.
“Do you know,” he said, suddenly looking at her with dark, self-important, prophetic eyes, “your fate and mine, they will run together, till—” and he broke off in a little grimace.
“Till when?” she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She was terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he only shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know.”
Gerald did not come in from his skiing until nightfall, he missed the coffee and cake that she took at four o’clock. The snow was in perfect condition, he had travelled a long way, by himself, among the snow ridges, on his skis, he had climbed high, so high that he could see over the top of the pass, five miles distant, could see the Marienhütte, the hostel on the crest of the pass, half buried in snow, and over into the deep valley beyond, to the dusk of the pine trees. One could go that way home; but he shuddered with nausea at the thought of home;—one could travel on skis down there, and come to the old imperial road, below the pass. But why come to any road? He revolted at the thought of finding himself in the world again. He must stay up there in the snow forever. He had been happy by himself, high up there alone, travelling swiftly on skis, taking far flights, and skimming past the dark rocks veined with brilliant snow.
But he felt something icy gathering at his heart. This strange mood of patience and innocence which had persisted in him for some days, was passing away, he would be left again a prey to the horrible passions and tortures.
So he came down reluctantly, snow-burned, snow-estranged, to the house in the hollow, between the knuckles of the mountain tops. He saw its lights shining yellow, and he held back, wishing he need not go in, to confront those people, to hear the turmoil of voices and to feel the confusion of other presences.
