As she spoke, I remembered what Witold had said to me about her.
She abruptly broke off. “Oh, let’s join the company! What will they think of a hostess who neglects her guests so!”
In the drawing-room, Owinski had not made his appearance as yet. Gina, as beautiful as a portrait by some Old Master, was reclining silently, in an amaranthine-coloured easy-chair.
Imszanski shot a glance and a faint smile at Mme. Wildenhoff, and offered me his arm to go in to supper.
Whoever it was—Amiel, I think—who maintained that women do not care to be analyzed, was in the wrong. It is rather men who dislike such analysis.
Why does a woman rarely fall in love with a man inferior to herself? Because she wants to be loved for all that is in her. And thence proceeds the grievance, not less distasteful than groundless, that men do not look on women as having minds as well as bodies. Now a man is quite satisfied if the woman acknowledges his superiority over her.
Those whom I like best are not those who attract me most, but who are able to comprehend and to realize my whole power of attraction. That is why I dislike to hear Imszanski babbling, in a superficial and general manner, of the excellence of my nature, not knowing in what it consists, and unable to grasp it.
And that, too, is why I have a liking for Wiazewski, and a wish that he could find it in his heart to love me.
Spring is coming. With a hot sun overhead, there is a cool breeze around. I feel joyful, and frolicsome, and full of animal spirits. I could fall upon the neck of the first man I met in the street! To be loved by somebody, that is my craving. I might feel less fearfully alone and cut off from everything in the world—I would give many a year of my life. Lord! if anyone would kiss me … now!—Only, not one of those. … Oh, not one of them!
So many years have passed away since that parting, never to fade out of my mind! Yes: he was the only man I could ever have loved. … How quickly it all passed away, and how completely it all came to an end! Strange.—A bit of life.
And now it sleeps, that happiness—sleeps beneath the flowery palls of many a springtime, past and gone.
Such a spring; oh, well-a-day! And in my heart and life all is so blank and so dismal!
I have lived but a short, a very short time; and notwithstanding, how many and how fair flowers of memory have I culled! If I could only remember them all—all of them—why, then, life would be endurable still.
And I am ever, as I go on, closer and closer to life: I wade along, athwart its foaming and tempestuous current; but it is in vain I would try to plunge into its waves and moisten these lips of mine, so parched with thirst—as if I were traversing a sea of quicksilver, whose dry metallic drops fly into liquid dust when they are touched.
And still I have to wait—to wait—to wait for something else, something like the spring in its glamour and its sunshine—to wait for a marvel, a prodigy, a miracle, that is to come!
In company with Gina and Owinski, I was just leaving a coffeehouse. In front of us, surrounded by several men, there walked a woman, rather thickset, far from tall, who wore a short-skirted, bright-coloured dress, and a wide-brimmed hat, also of a bright hue. She went slowly, with an undulating motion of the hips, turning, now to right, now to left, now behind her, chattering with lively interest, and addressing them all together, her hands meanwhile nimble with gestures like those of a flower-girl offering nosegays. We caught glimpses of her profile—very long lashes and a short straight nose. There seemed to be some witchery wafted towards me from that figure.
“A cocotte?” I asked Gina.
She looked at her, and nodded, with a lowering face.
We had previously been talking of love. She resumed the subject where I had interrupted her.
… “Ah, but I am not by any means telling you it is absolute bliss. No. Love only intensifies all things whatever: and thus, not joy only, but pain as well. Love is an exceedingly powerful stimulant, the strengthener of all that belongs to life. And this, when all its colours are thus suddenly brightened up, becomes like some magic fairy tale, some eternal Divine Vision of life. …”
Owinski, plunged deep in his musings, was not listening to us at all, though Gina spoke especially for him. The golden fire which flashed in her eyes died out when she realized this.
“We ourselves are alone in fault; it is we who have brought about that immense misery, the fiery pain of which is now eating our hearts out. For every time we have turned a man away from us, every denial of the lips that belied the pulsing of the blood is a sin against Life. Every such night, when those who craved love for love received it not, but were perforce obliged to purchase it with gold, is a sin against Life—of which we are guilty.
“And therefore should we all—like consecrated priestesses—go forth:—forth to suffering and to shame, with the laughter of Spring, and its cry Evoë! love for love, joy for joy, pain for pain—welling up from our hearts!”
“But why then pain?”
“I do not know; but so it has to be. Surely you feel that intense joy is not to be purchased without intense pain.”
Owinski, looking down the long vista of the street, took not the slightest interest in what she was saying. Gina became silent; it may be that a feeling of shame had come upon
