And therefore it is that I am so unlike other women, whose great characteristic is that their feelings are cultured.
At times, when I see him afar, standing out from amongst the crowd, splendid in shape and wonderful in beauty, I have a sense of pride that he is mine—my own! Neither a pet cat nor a dog, neither a parrot nor a canary: a man of the world, tall, refined, in life’s prime. And this marvellous creature belongs to me. It is truly hard to realize this; and my brain whirls with pleasure at the very thought of such a possession.
When sitting by my side, he loses that charm of his, so extremely rare and of no less value—the charm of aloofness. He is mine assuredly, my Witold. I know him well, I know him by heart. Never anything but by fits and starts; incorrigible in his defects, which are exceedingly hard to bear; obstinate and childish; his mind consisting of two or at most three strata, the uppermost of which alone contains a little gold; and under this you may root and dig all your life long, and never find anything but sand, and sand, and sand forever!—But why do I always want to find things out, and go deeper and deeper?
When he kisses, it is as if he were drinking the blood out of me. I turn pale, and am weak and inert—ever more and more inert. In his arms I melt, or am like a flower drooping and dying in the sunbeams. I have not the strength even to raise my eyelids; it is as though the lashes had grown together.
But—and this is an odd thing—I never yield beyond a certain point, not determined by any resolve or will of mine, but by instinct and instinct alone. A moment comes when there surges up within me as it were a cold and ironically smiling energy; with one gesture, I repulse that creature full of intemperate desire, enchanting though he is in his thoughtless waywardness.
He always goes away humbled, vanquished, and concealing under the hearty kindness of a farewell kiss the gathering hostility of an everlasting antagonism.
For indeed I have never yet been his “paramour,” in any sense of the word used by Martha, when she questioned me.
Yet, when victorious, I at times wish that I had been defeated. Truly, I cannot understand myself. But I do not so much as attempt to strive against this something within me that can even overcome the natural bent of my temperament.
It is conceivably the instinct of self-preservation, which has in woman, through the immemorial working of heredity, been turned in one and only one special direction, antagonistic to unchastity. The ideal woman would prefer death to what is called shame, would she not?
And I also possess this involuntary and automatic tendency, instinctive yet purposeful; and in me it is only very partially blunted by the force of sober reason. But this explains well why my bias towards emancipation has its source and finds its scope chiefly in the intellectual sphere.
Last evening I spent some time in Gina’s studio. I was glad she had asked me to come, for last night there was something or other on at Witold’s club, and I do not like to pass my evenings alone now. I fear my own thoughts, which are never so profound as in solitude and by night. This activity of my mind sometimes exceeds my limited strength to bear it. And when I note that there is in this some resemblance between myself and Martha, I again hear her prediction of vengeance ringing in my ears.—There are moments when oh, how weak, how very weak I feel!
Although I have known Gina for a long time, our relations are always on a strictly formal footing. When we meet at a common friend’s, her behaviour is almost distant; when she is playing the part of hostess, she is not only courteous, but eager to show courtesy; and this difference in her bearing is very marked. At home, she is seldom gloomy, will not let the conversation flag for an instant, shows me her paintings, her albums, new periodicals and books; makes me most delicious black coffee; and is incessantly moving about, light-footed and supple, with lithe and snakelike motion, dressed in a long dark gown with trailing skirts, glittering with her gold earrings and her metallic belt, amid the easels and canvasses and stools of every shape, and all the admired disorder of her studio. And she tactfully avoids talking about herself, as she does not wish the least shade of gloom to enter our conversation.
“Are you quite comfortable?” she inquires, kindly. “Please don’t stand on ceremony, but sit down on this ottoman: very cosy, believe me. Let me put this skin under your head—the softest fur; as soft as silk. Now isn’t it nice to rest on?”
She fetches me a tiny stand, and places a cup of coffee upon its lower shelf, with teacakes and a tiny glass, so that I have everything close at hand.
“Now, a little drop of liqueur; that will do nicely, won’t it?”
In her studio a beautiful soft red twilight prevails. The lamp, well shaded, glows in a corner upon a low table. The easels throw black lines, long-drawn, big and grotesque, upon the upper parts of the walls. A glazed roof, which forms the greater part of the ceiling, looks like black velvet, framed in white with pink flowers along the frames.
Gina is to some extent an imitator of Costenoble. The last sketch made by her for a very large painting represents a man, with head thrown back in a pose of fatuous triumph, while at his feet a woman, instinct with subtle delicacy, suggests by her attitude the coils of a writhing serpent.
The sketch, as a whole, is melodramatic, and not very convincing. I prefer Gina as
