“It appears among nations at the epoch of their highest development, and is the harbinger of their speedy decline,” remarked Czolhanski, with solemn dignity.
“What does it matter? Après nous le déluge!”
“And to what class would you assign conjugal love?” asked Owinski. Gina, who had silently disposed her lithe, snakelike, supple figure on a little sofa, looked round with astonishment at her fiancé.
“Oh, we may call it love of a third type,” answered Madame Wildenhoff: “love sanctioned by law, the union of two souls in friendship, and the bringing forth of rachitic offspring: an abnormal combination of brute and human love.”
“Do you then, Madame,” urged Owinski, “perceive no good points in marriage?”
“None whatever,” she replied with a bland smile, “because—and this reason alone would suffice me—because I hate marriage with all my heart. It has been and is the aim of my life to blast marriage, whenever I can succeed in doing so. Between the happiest and most moral couples—those in which one of the two, the husband or the wife, leads a profligate life, and the other knows nothing of it—I bring the dissolving element, enlightenment, and rejoice when I see the couples fall apart.”
Here she bent aside toward her husband’s chair, and said to him in an affectionate and audible whisper:
“But we are a pattern couple, are we not?”
This time, Imszanski went home with me. I overheard Czolhanski say, on taking leave of him: “You may rely upon me absolutely; I will manage everything.”
It has been terribly cold, and now there is a thaw. At such times, I love to wander up and down the avenues in the park, which then are completely deserted.
My nostrils inhale that peculiar scent of bare moist earth, and the effluvium from the buds as yet invisible; and I muse upon those incomparable and marvellously beautiful things that have never been realized.
On the yellow background of dry dead grass, there appeared in the distance a young man to whom, as to myself, loneliness was no doubt pleasant, and who enjoyed walking along the avenues oversprinkled with last year’s fallen leaves.
He came up with me, and on passing by, looked keenly into my eyes, and with something of astonishment.
I did not return his glance, but walked more slowly, so as to lag behind him.
The young man stopped presently, and waited until I came up; then he passed by me again with a protracted stare.
This manoeuvre was repeated several times. Presently I was seized with an unaccountable desire to burst into a fit of nervous laughter, which I smothered down as best I could. At any rate, I had the full control of my eyes, the expression of which was mere indifference and disdain. Presently I looked him steadily in the face, to stare him out of countenance; so that he could see my attitude to be unmistakably hostile.
“But why,” I was thinking all the time, “why should I look upon him—this handsome slender stripling—as my foe? He certainly does not mean to harm me in any way; his interest is simply aroused in finding a person who has the same taste for solitude as himself, whilst he naturally has a friendly feeling towards a good-looking woman.”
The young fellow, at first kindly disposed, was nettled by the look of hostility in my eyes. He came up close to me, with a flippant laugh, and said in an ironical tone of sympathy:
“I would give anything in reason to know what sorrows of the heart have driven you to take so very romantic a walk as this.”
I was silent, and knit my brows.
“Souls that pine in loneliness,” he went on, as sarcastic as before, “ought to comfort each other, I think: don’t you?”
There was a pause, as we walked side by side.
“But why knit those fair eyebrows so? Oh, really, you frighten me. … Such malignant eyes! Come, come, I shall do you no harm; why be so cantankerous?”
In a rage and turning my back on him, I walked swiftly away. He made no attempt to follow. On arriving at the gate, where I was safe at last, I looked round. He was standing where he had stood before, and from afar waving me with bared head a graceful farewell.
The incident mortified and abashed me. I had behaved like a silly goose, narrow-minded and ill-tempered; I had spoiled a situation that might have had pleasant or curious developments. Why on earth had I done so?
Was this, again, only a matter of form? The necessity of that regular introduction, so dear to the bourgeoisie, in a drawing-room where two persons are made acquainted with each other by a third? Or was it not rather that dread—now a part of our life—the instinctive dread of things as they are, the eternal need of playing the part of a besieged fort, which defends itself stubbornly in order to surrender on the best terms possible?
As I came out of the park, a carriage driven at full speed passed by me; I saw a couple of feathers and a good deal of fur. Suddenly the coachman pulled up, and Mme. Wildenhoff jumped out and came towards me.
“Ah! how delighted I am to meet you! You won’t get away from me this time. Pray step in: I must make a regular woman of you.”
“With pleasure: but what’s the
