“Full sway,” repeated Peeperkorn. “You have put that very—very—well.” He released Hans Castorp’s hand, and began with his own huge ones to massage both sides of his own face, eyes, cheeks, and chin. Then he folded his hands upon the wine-bespotted sheet, and laid his head on the left shoulder, the one toward his guest, with the effect that his face was lightly turned away.
“I have given you the best answer I could, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp said. “I have tried to say neither too much nor too little. I was concerned to let you see that it is in a way open to us to count that evening—when the ‘thou’ had full sway, and it was the eve of Clavdia’s departure—or not to count it. It was an extraordinary occasion, almost outside the calendar, intercalated, so to speak, a twenty-ninth of February. It would have been only half a lie if I had simply denied the truth of what you said.”
Peeperkorn made no answer.
“I preferred,” Hans Castorp began again, after a pause, “to tell you the truth, rather than run the risk of losing your favour, which, I openly admit, would be a sensible loss to me, I may say a blow, a real blow, comparable to the one I received when Frau Chauchat returned hither as the companion of your travels. I have risked letting this happen, because I have long wished and hoped that there might be understanding between myself and the man for whom I entertained feelings of the most extraordinary respect and reverence. It seemed finer, more ‘human’ to me—you know that is Clavdia’s favourite word, and how she pronounces it, in that enchanting, husky drawl of hers—than silence and dissimulation; and in that sense a weight was lifted from my heart when you put your question.”
No answer.
“One thing more, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” Hans Castorp went on. “There was another thing that made me wish to make a clean breast of it to you: and that was the personal experience I had with the irritating effect of uncertainty, being let in for suspicions that could be neither confirmed nor dismissed. You know now who it was—before this present relationship was established which it would be absurd of me not to respect—with whom Clavdia spent—or experienced, or committed—that twenty-ninth of February. It is clear to you now. But for my part I have never been able to know—though of course I realized that anyone in my situation has to reckon with the past—by which I really mean predecessors—and though I also realized that Hofrat Behrens is an amateur portrait-painter, and had, in the course of many sittings, made a capital portrait of her, with a treatment of the skin so very lively and realistic that—between ourselves—it gave me very seriously to think. I have tormented myself no end with that riddle, and still do.”
“You still love her?” Peeperkorn asked, without changing his position, his face still turned away. The large room fell more and more into twilight.
“You will pardon me, Mynheer Peeperkorn,” answered Hans Castorp, “but my feeling for you, which is one of the highest respect and admiration, will not permit me to speak of my feeling for the present companion of your travels.”
“And does she—” Peeperkorn asked, with lowered voice, “does she still return your feeling?”
“I do not say,” answered Hans Castorp, “I do not say that she ever returned it. That is scarcely credible. We were touching upon this subject earlier in the afternoon, when we spoke of the responsive nature of women. There is nothing much about me to fall in love with. I am not built on a grand scale, as you can see. The possibility of—of a twenty-ninth of February could only be ascribed to feminine receptivity on the basis of the man’s choice already made. I must say that when I refer to myself as a man, it seems to me a sort of self-advertising and bad taste—but at all events, Clavdia is a woman.”
“She was responsive to your feeling,” murmured Peeperkorn, with wry lips.
“How much more so to yours,” said Hans Castorp. “And in all probability to many another. One has to face that, when—”
“Stop!” Peeperkorn said, still turned away, but with a gesture of the palm toward his interlocutor. “Is it not rather—common—of us to talk about her?”
“I don’t feel it so, Mynheer Peeperkorn. I think I can set your mind at rest on that point. These are human topics we are treating of; human in the sense that they have to do with freedom and the spirituel—you must pardon me if I use a rather ambiguous terminology, but I needed the expression lately, and made it my own.”
“Very good, go on,” Peeperkorn said in a low voice.
Hans Castorp spoke in a low voice, too, and sat on the edge of his chair by the bed, bent toward the kingly old man, his hands between his knees.
“For she is certainly a most spirituel being,” he said, “and the husband beyond the Caucasus—you know, of course, that she has a husband beyond the Caucasus—gives her her freedom, whether out of stupidity or intelligence I don’t know, I don’t know the chap. But it is a good thing he does, for it is her illness grants it to her—and whoever falls into our situation will do well to follow his example, and not complain, either of the past or of the future.”
“You don’t complain?” asked Peeperkorn, and turned his face. It seemed ashen in the twilight, the pale, weary eyes stared out beneath the great folds of brow, the large chapped lips stood half open, like the mouth of a tragic mask.
“I hardly thought it was a question of myself,” Hans Castorp answered modestly. “What I meant was that you should not complain, nor deprive me of your
