I was gazing at the pretty Frenchwoman; suddenly I saw a delighted expression flash over her striking and reposeful face, somewhat harem-like in its beauty. I instinctively followed her glance, and—not without somewhat of embarrassed astonishment—discovered Imszanski. He was just entering from the doorway, and going through the saloon, distributing on all sides bows or smiles, as a beautiful woman does flowers. His wonderfully sweet and dreamy eyes were seeking someone in the room.
A sudden flash lit them up, as they met the gaze of the handsome Frenchwoman.
Imszanski, on his way to them, happened to see me, and Wiazewski in my company.
Directly, and without showing the least surprise or embarrassment, he changed his expression and saluted us with urbane cordiality, and though he had just gone past our table, he returned, shook hands, and begged leave to sit down beside us.
The Frenchwoman at the neighbouring table was just putting on her gloves, while the actor paid the bill. I should very willingly have told Imszanski not to mind about us, but go on to his acquaintances, who we could see were expecting him. But I refrained, not wishing to lay on his shoulders a burden of gratitude for keeping this matter concealed from Martha, which might later have proved irksome to him.
Stephen, too, understood.
“We are here,” he presently said, “waiting for Madame Wildenhoff, Owinski with his intended, and Czolhanski. It is rather late now: I doubt whether they are going to turn up.”
Imszanski turned aside to say something to a waiter, when he noted with satisfaction that the actors had left the saloon.
He then said he hoped and trusted that we would not look upon him as an intruder, though he had thrust himself on us in such a way.
Czolhanski, a journalist, arrived at about one o’clock, together with Owinski and his fiancée, Miss Gina Wartoslawska, whom I had seen several times previously at Imszanski’s.
Her real name is Regina; but she is called Gina. In the movements of her lithe elastic figure is a sort of snakelike suppleness, which tells us of a nervous nature, burning with a passion almost painfully suppressed. She is like a tame panther. Her eyes, long, narrow, partly concealed beneath thin lids, wander hither and thither about the floor with a drooping, apathetic look. Her lips are broad, flattened as it were by many kisses, moist and crimson as if they bled. And, with all that, there is in her something of the type of a priestess.
She came in, drawing black gloves off her slender hands, greeted us with an unsmiling face, and at once called out to a waiter who was passing by:
“A glass of water!”
She drank the whole glass at one draught, and sat down at some distance from the table, with her head bent forward, and her hands clasped over her knees. Owinski took a seat close beside her.
“Czolhanski,” he told us, “has only just got through his critique of the leading actress in tonight’s play. We had to stay for him in the editor’s waiting-room.”
“Ah,” grumbled the critic, “it’s beastly, this work all done to order and at railway speed! Such a piece as that ought to be thought over till it is possible to form a definite judgment upon it. As it is, we are forced to save the situation by means of a lot of sententious generalities.”
At last, Madame Wildenhoff arrived with her husband. At the unexpected sight of Imszanski in our company, a deep blush mantled her face. She seated herself next to Gina, and burst into a fit of chuckling, shading her eyes with beautiful hands that carried many a ring. All this was rather unusual and disquieting. Imszanski flushed slightly; a warm haze, so thin that it could scarce be seen, bedimmed his eyes, and his long lashes drooped over them.
Wildenhoff, an unpleasant cut-and-dried sort of man, whose humour inclined to sarcastic silence, proposed that we should pass into a private room. She protested.
“Oh, no! I dearly love noise and music and an uproar all about me. We had better stay here, hadn’t we?”
Wildenhoff smiled at his wife and was presently deep in study of the bill of fare.
She again set to laughing without any cause: a disquieting sort of chuckle, with something like a sob now and then.
I glanced at the two couples, feeling a twinge of envy. “There is love between them.” …
Oh, but all that was so very, very long ago!
I wish Stephen would fall in love with me. But he is always running after some theory or other. At times he is as droll as a boarding school girl. I do believe his friendship for me to be absolutely disinterested. He, on his side, declares that a handsome woman, as such, means nothing to him. The type he loves is uncultured, shallow-brained animality.
He is as yet too youthful. Men’s taste for women more spiritualized, more cultured, more quick-witted, is only a reaction: it shows a decline in the vital forces, and tells of old age about to set in.
All the time of our return home, he, rather in the clouds, holds forth with artificial animation.
“With you, Janka, I could well live alone in a wilderness, were you even twice as beautiful as you are—and never remember that I was in presence of a being of the other sex. And, indeed, this is the most natural thing in the world: if such a thought ever entered my brain, I should feel humiliated that a woman was mentally my equal.”
“But is it with perfect disinterestedness that you have chosen a pretty young
