Closer and closer we drew. Hallucinated with rapture, I was almost out of my mind. The air around me grew rosy, and the walls had a purple glow, and the lamp was burning—how can I express it? Black, quite black! Bending down his head, he fixed his eyes on me.
“Janka!” he said, with low but clear-cut articulation; “Janka!” His voice was changed; it was strangled and seething with emotion. There was in it just a touch of surprise—surprise at the victory which he now foresaw.
I was startled, and a shiver ran through me. A noise as of a whirlwind murmured confusedly in my ears; my throat was filled with a hot suffocating fragrance, and I felt as if the air I breathed had grown solid and came in morsels.
“Janka, Janka,” he whispered again, as if struggling with his deep perturbation; for he was greatly moved.
In a sort of hypnotic trance, I stared hard into his dimly glistening eyes. I kissed his mouth. … All my soul, with all its faculties, transported from the infinitely distant confines of the world of thought, was concentrated and poured out in that one kiss of mine!
Ah! I cannot understand what it was that at such a moment held me back, since I and all that was mine had now been transformed and had passed into one desire alone. It was no longer thirst, it was hunger—raging, ravenous hunger. I clung to him with all my might, and whispered and stammered a string of broken incoherent words; and, in a delirium of mingled agony and bliss, I sighed under my breath:
“Oh, my only one; oh, my own!”
And afterwards—afterwards, when he had left my side, ungratified and disappointed, as he ever had been—then, with a burst of heartrending tears, I threw myself down upon the floor near the door which had just closed on him, and listened to the sound of his footsteps, and murmured imploringly:
“Oh, come—come—come back! I am yours!”
But had he come back—I knew it well—I should have resisted then, as always.
And perhaps it is true to say that such a thirst as mine was cannot possibly be quenched by any delight on earth!
All is once more as it was of old. I am much in love, happy (to some extent), and slightly sarcastic about things in general. Witold comes daily; he is good and tender to me beyond words.
Sometimes our conversation flags. Then we read together—novels and poems only; for Witold, scientific literature is nonexistent. A volume of Owinski’s poems, just published, has given us many a pleasant hour.
She is right, Idalia: I had taken all things—and that also—too much in earnest. At present, I am trying to live more practically than I ever did.
Of the present situation, nothing can come—neither marriage nor anything else. So, as I reckon, it may last at the most one year more. I have to be prepared for that, and let the parting come by degrees and as easily as possible; so I am looking beforehand for some rock or other to which I may cling when wrecked. Now and then, when I think of my ideals once cherished in the past, the notion still comes to me (though rarely) of a love both deep and wise.
Better seek something far other than love—an “aim in life”—some idea—asceticism—even such as a nunnery can provide! “Dans la bête assouvie un ange se réveille!” Yes, but—is it “assouvie”? Well, I am rather tired, not only of love, but of the whole atmosphere I am living in.
In truth, disdain of all things is best of all. Yet again, disdain itself would be one of the things to be disdained!
I am curiously entangled at present, and can scarcely recognize myself as “Her of the Ice-Plains.” In this continual struggle with myself, my strength has been exhausted.
Ah, yes; another incident. Czolhanski has proposed to me in the most naive fashion imaginable. Although I am a woman of “advanced” ideas (and they say such a one hardly can make a good wife), still he is not alarmed; he trusts in me! Besides, he could not live with any woman unable to understand him. … Also, he gets two hundred roubles a month, which, together with my office salary, … And so on.
I have refused him categorically, hopelessly, irrevocably. And—which is much more strange—I have done so without the shadow of a smile.
When I am very weary and out of sorts, I go and call up Wiazewski. There are people who resemble those ships which were formerly used by slave traders to convey their human freight: these had a double hold. And Wiazewski is one of such men.
He allows anyone to overhaul his soul on the asking, freely and frankly. Only he does not like them, when they come to the hold, to knock too hard: the hollow sound underneath would betray his secret. Beneath the false bottom, there is a dark den into which he smuggles those he has enslaved to his will, never to go out free into the world again. The knowledge of this would spoil his reputation in society as an estimable man.
“Do you know, Stephen, you look like a man who has a bit of a tragedy upon his conscience, and is concealing it.”
He laughed. “Since when has Janka begun to grow romantic?”
“Since I fell in love, of course!”
“You!!” Astounded, he stared at me.
“My dear friend, what can there be to surprise you in that?”
“I really … no, really I do not know. I was only taken aback. Certainly, on your side, it is but a natural thing. Don’t you see? I had grown so accustomed to look on you as belonging to a third sex.”
“There now, how unjust you have been! I on my own part have always looked on you as a man.”
“But come, tell me with whom you are in love, and whether your bliss is all that fancy painted it.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Bliss! It is you who are romantic
