Nevertheless, there is no love, nor even much liking, between Martha and myself. We do not so much as call each other friends. We both agree that, between one woman and another, no true love is possible; and so we do not try to cheat ourselves with a counterfeit. But, though we do not say everything openly and in words, still we know and understand one another to perfection.
The one thing that could drive us apart would be mutual rivalry in love for a man. Happily, however, Martha holds this to be out of the question. Ascetically disposed, she prides herself on the fact that no one has ever loved her. She likes as a rule to play the part of one that the world and that men misunderstand and fail to appreciate. This part, moreover, she plays very gracefully, she being a pretty girl, and no one taking her too much in earnest.
“My life,” she is wont to say, “is as pure as a blank page; no thrill is recorded there, no kiss, no blush. I have no faith save in this crystal transparency of my being; save in the knowledge that Life passes close to me, touches me, grazes me, and yet by some miracle never leaves upon my long white robe one streak from the golden pollen of the flowers she bears; no faith save in the immaculateness of this my soul, that can travel through a coal-mine, and yet come out white as snow. The only article of my faith, the sole thing I care for, is the conviction that I shall go through life nobly and beautifully, in sweetness and tranquillity infinite; that my passage upon earth will be all sunshine and loveliness: the blossoming of a rare and goodly flower. So may I die! Even though love could give me happiness, I still would stand aloof from it. …”
Yes, but now and then in the dim blue twilight, she plays “Der Frühling” of Grieg: and then I feel that what she says is not the truth. In her notes there is a tone of longing unspeakable, that begs, with gentle half-audible entreaty … for something. And that fair white soul of her is always sobbing with pain, and dreaming—ever dreaming—of love.
When all is said, I am clever, young, and good-looking: so I want to live my life. Nietzsche will not have us forget the law: For a woman, a stick. Amiel declares she must love one only, and obey a sex-morality that has been made for her alone. Garborg tells us that she ought not to go anywhere without a governess, so that her future husband may find suspicion impossible. In spite of all which, I am resolved to live my own woman’s life.
Hitherto I have not found out what femininity essentially is. In the Roslawski period, I piously believed aesthetic feeling to be the great typical quality of womanliness. But now—Ellen Key asserts that the woman always shapes herself as the man desires. If then he, the Only One, be a primitive, masterful, despotic man, am I to season his siesta and cigar with witty conversation, and bind my hair and dance and sound the timbrel for him, whilst to all others my eyes alone are to be visible, my face hidden under a veil? I want to live my woman’s life … nothing more. Until, perhaps. …
Oh, how hard it is for a girl to bear, upon her white and shapely shoulders, the awful burden of conscious humanity!
At times, Janusz is as gentle as a tame young wolf, and that ravenous look has faded from his eyes. Then I permit him to kiss my hands and lay them to his sunburnt cheeks. When the wild beast within him has for a while fallen asleep, he has all the kindness, all the sweetness of a child. Yet even then I feel the presence of a latent force which may break out at any time: a force which—I cannot tell why—seems to me antagonistic.
“How I wish you would allow me to call you my darling!” he said today, when sitting at my feet on a bank of turf, and touching the border of my skirt caressingly, like a favourite cat.
I looked from above at the long lashes of his downcast eyes, at his scarlet lips, at his beautifully chiselled nose, and said within myself: “Why don’t you then? I should only just set one long loving kiss—two perhaps—upon those lips of yours and leave you without one word of regret.”
“Are you offended then?” he asked, looking up at me.
I knitted my brows slightly, but could not keep the corners of my mouth still.
“Yes, I am.”
“But you are smiling. Why do you smile so strangely?”
And his eyes gaze at me from under his thick brows—gaze slyly and sweetly, while the hot blood burns in my cheeks. Never, in the days
