After a while, my nervousness passes away, and I can hear myself asking him about his voyage, about England, about the sea; the calm indifference of my own voice is a surprise to me.
The first coherent thought which strikes me is—that I am a handsome woman: that I must be handsome. Roslawski is talking to Obojanski; it is a long time since they met, and they must be left to themselves a little while. I get up from my armchair and go towards Smilowicz, who stands silently by, looking at a new book on one of the shelves. Cool, majestic, with head erect and bright eyes shining serenely in the gaslight, I walk by, close to Roslawski. I see myself as from without, clad in a clinging black dress, wearing a great soft and quaintly designed autumn hat; with outlines that form a graceful silhouette, slow movements, picturesque in their indolence, the outcome of a superfluity of latent vital force, kept down and subdued by the will.
For the first time now I cast my eyes upon him, and meet that cold, critical glance of his. No one but myself has ever hitherto been able to look at me in such wise.
I am standing by Smilowicz, and stoop down with a motion full of elegance and grace, to read the title of the book he is perusing. And all the time I know that the other’s cold glance is fixed on me.
“You have changed very considerably during the vacation, Miss Dernowicz,” Roslawski says to me, in an undertone audible in the quiet room.
“Have I?” This I say with a smile, raising my head.
“Yes, you seem taller now, and more like a ‘grownup.’ Last year there was still something of the schoolgirl in your appearance.”
I protest, laughingly, and try to talk with Smilowicz. But instead of listening to him, I am thinking.
Roslawski is to my mind not so much a man as a mechanical power, something of a nature that is hostile and full of hatred; something dangerous; a mesmeric influence. This tall, well-dressed, well-informed gentleman in glasses is not to my mind a living man: rather a sort of abstract idea. At times I can scarce believe him to have any personal existence at all.
I have somehow the impression that I am standing upon a railway track, in a whirlwind of frozen snow. Above the howling of the blast, I hear the thunder of an approaching train; but I remain rooted to the spot, my eyes fixed upon the cold unfeeling glare from the lamps of the engine rushing on and going to crush me:—rooted there as in a dreadful nightmare, and unable to take my eyes away from those calm and ever-dazzling lights. There I stand, waiting, powerless, full of hostility yet of self-abasement.
Tea is brought, and the conversation becomes general. To the atmosphere that always reigns at Obojanski’s, Roslawski now brings a newly imported stock of British iciness and rigidity. We all are sensible of the bonds of I know not what invisible etiquette, enveloping and wrapping us up like subtle, unbreakable cobwebs: we no longer venture to laugh out loud; everything is suppressed and stiff and grey.
“So then,” he says, without for a second taking his eyes off me during the whole of our conversation, “so then, you can manage to look at everything in life as an object of observation and severe minute analysis?”
“Yes, I can. Predominance of the thinking over the emotional faculties is a characteristic of my brain.”
“Don’t you consider this a disadvantage to you? Such constant vigilance must deprive you of all directness in feeling.”
“To some extent, yes. But this want of directness is fully compensated by the very process of observation and analysis, which are a source of intense pleasure to me. Besides, in the place of mere intensity of impression, I attain a far wider range; for my mind has the pleasure of perceiving and discriminating certain nice shades, which escape the notice of others.”
A smile rises to Roslawski’s lips, and I feel my soul freezing within me.
And now, summer is dead and gone: withered with suffering and desire, the flame-red flower of Life has fallen to the ground. Now once more the infinite ice-plains are stretching all around me. Behold the sun quenched in the black sky, and the greenish Northern Lights rising above the horizon. And my ice-cold dreams, that had died, now come to life again. And see! that Soul of mine, which trampled my flowers beneath her feet, girds up her loins and goes forth into the snowy Infinite, priding herself upon her sorry triumph, and singing joyously her lofty and sublime hymn to Death!
Oh, how terrible it is, when the Soul is victorious! How terrible!
The weather has changed very suddenly; it is nearly as warm as in summer, and the leaves seem to have turned yellow with heat.
I am coming home from the office, alone and forsaken by all.
I am dreaming (like a dream indeed it is) of the boundless fields, the picturesque ridges, the dark forests and fragrant meadows of Klosow. I see the park, too, with its neatly-trimmed shrubberies and lofty trees; their bare trunks and leafy tops forming a canopy high overhead under the sky, and the foliage turning yellow or red in the sunny glare. The pond, too, do I see—so large that it may be called a lake—the pond, bleak and desolate in the moonless, starless night; that night, when I broke away from the magic spell of Life, and slew my own felicity with my own hands.
Before my eyes, people are walking along the avenues, strewn with dry dead leaves. The slightest breath of air brings down from the trees these tatters and strips, once a purple kingly mantle: but men go on, pitilessly trampling down the rustling leaves.
Now I am in a strange humour—a sort of Pantheistic mood. My Ego is multiplying, growing into
