“As I don’t wish you to feel sorry for me, Stephen, I will inform you that I have already broken with that gentleman; so that his doings do not concern me in the least now.”
At my words, Wiazewski slackened his pace.
“Why, in that case, Janka …” he began.
“Pray, Stephen, don’t. I begged you once before—”
He said nothing further then, and walked on for a considerable time with head bent down; finally, he said to me in an undertone:
“May we not think of marriage, merely as a bond of friendship?”
“No, no! … Can you not see that a wife never has the disinterestedness of a friend? How can she be at one with her husband in everything? In many cases, she would be wronging herself. For instance, what interests me most in you—your scorn both for things ethical and emotional—would, if I were your wife, become hateful to me; and your close acquaintance with feminine psychology and the art of lovemaking, would either be dangerous to me, or, as recalling past times, unpleasant at the least. And you, you would have to become insincere; to gain a wife, you would necessarily lose a friend: and surely a friend is worth more. …”
He walked along in silence, listening to me.
“And besides,” I concluded, “let me tell you that you have come too late. A year ago, at the time when you never would treat me but as a friend, it would have been possible. Then I was not unfrequently vexed with you, calling you (I remember) a boarding school miss, when you extolled friendship and poured your love-theory into my ears. Today I am not for love any more. Not because Fate has dealt me any crushing blow. Nothing of the sort; but merely because it has all been most fearfully boring to me. And at present I am taking my revenge for it upon you, in the proverbial phrase: ‘Let us remain friends.’ ”
I had quickened my pace. Wiazewski said not a word. I felt as if I was hastening towards a dark chasm which ever drew back before me, fleeing as I advanced. … I want all to be over—to lie there, at the bottom of that murky chasm; and, do what I may, I cannot arrive at the brink. And my teeth are clenched with pain.
“If you knew how madly I love the exceeding sweetness of his mouth!” The words flashed then through my mind: a reminiscence of the far-off, far-off Past!
“I cannot understand you in the least. Never, never, should I have acted so in your place.”
“Well, Gina, it is over. Tell me now what remedy you would advise me to take. How do you yourself manage to bear life? To remain passive, doing nothing—that were surely impossible. Work? But work is of no avail. Unless something happens to rescue me, I shall have to leave the office; I fear I am about to go mad. … Are you still interested in art? You paint very little now; I cannot make out why.”
Gina shook her head with a drowsy air. “I always preferred Life to Art.”
“Why,” I said, noticing that she was in evening dress, “you are going out tonight!” The thought of staying by myself all the evening made me shudder. At the same time, I felt my cheeks colouring, for I feared there was a mortification in store for me which I could not understand. “I trust you will tell me quite frankly.”
For a few seconds she knit her brows and reflected. Then, “I think,” she said, “that it will not be impossible. … I have for a long time wished to make you the proposal; but, in such a matter, one cannot be too cautious. … Yet, after all, we too have something in common. And I have learned to know you.”
Abruptly she came to a decision.
“Then—yes, I can recommend something to you. If you hold out, it is only by its means.”
“Give it me, quick!”
“Wait a little. I must in the first place demand of you to keep this a profound secret. I hide nothing else that I do: yet this I hide. Secondly: it is something that, for effects and surroundings’ sake, we do in conclave. I shall take you there.”
We went.
Radlowski came to open the door. When he saw me, he was taken aback, though he tried to carry it off under a show of courtesy.
“We have a neophyte here,” Gina explained.
But the explanation rather increased than removed his trouble, though he at once pretended lively satisfaction. He said aside to Gina: “But something must be done: Emma is here.”
Gina laughed. “Oh, all the better! If you have nothing but that to make you uneasy!”
Radlowski was now more at ease. He ushered us into his bedchamber, beyond the studio, and left us there together. Now and then we could hear a confused sound of talking, though the voices were low, in the next room.
“And Emma, who is she?” I asked.
“Oh, a most beautiful woman, though not exactly admissible into society. One of the celebrated étoiles of beauty, formerly a model of Radlowski’s.”
Gina, picking up a small phial from the toilet table, took some of the contents herself, and then gave me directions how the narcotic was to be taken.
We went into the studio, where a wealth of carpets, hangings, bits of tapestry, and wide low Ottomans was scattered about. Nothing here revealed the artistic disorder of the typical atelier. In a corner, however, there stood an easel, with a half-finished canvas—a portrait; and several paintings hung from the walls.
By the delicate radiance of several glass and paper patterns of artistic design, I perceived some men and women, who all rose to greet us as we came in.
Emma I recognized at the first glance. She got up and walked slowly towards Gina, looking all the time straight at us, out of wonderfully
