“I want … to be with you.”
She shook her head. “That’s no good. Do you remember what you said? You’re engaged and … you want to save the world from something terrible. Well, do it. You must keep yourself pure; otherwise … otherwise it’ll be bad. And I can’t. …” She passed her hand along the steering wheel. “Where do you want to go? Where do you live?”
He clasped her in his arms with all his strength. “You’ve … killed Holz! Don’t you. …”
“I know,” she said quietly. “Do you imagine that I can’t feel? It seemed as if my own bones were being crushed and I see him in front of me all the time, all the time the car is rushing at him, and again and again he runs forward—” she shivered. “Well, where? To the right or the left?”
“Is this the end?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “It is the end.”
He opened the door, sprang out of the car and stood before it. “Go on,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Drive over me.”
She reversed and drove back a few yards. “Come, we must go farther. I’ll take you at least to the frontier. Where do you want to go?”
“Back,” he said through his teeth, “back with you.”
“With me you can’t either go back or go forward. Don’t you understand? I must do this to see, to be certain that I love you. Do you think that I could hear what you told me again? You can’t go back; you would either have to give up … what you don’t want to give up and mustn’t, or they’d take you away, and I—” She let her hands fall into her lap. “You see, I’ve thought of what it would mean if I were to go on with you. I should be able to, I should certainly be able to, but … you’ve got a fiancée somewhere—go to her. Do you know it never occurred to me to ask you about her. When one’s a princess one thinks that one’s alone in the world. Do you love her?”
He looked at her with eyes which were full of torture; yet he couldn’t deny—
“There you are,” she breathed. “You darling, you simply cannot lie! But listen. When I considered—What was I to you? What was it that I did? Did you think of her when you were in love with me? How you must have hated me! No, say nothing! Don’t take away from me the strength to say these last words.”
She wrung her hands. “I loved you! I loved you, man, as much as I could ever love anybody—more. And you, you were so loath to believe it that finally you shattered even my faith. Do I love you? I don’t know. When I see you there I could thrust a knife into my breast; I should like to die and I don’t know what else, but do I love you? I—I don’t know. And when you took me into your arms … for the last time I felt something … impure in me … and in you. Forgive my kisses; they were … unclean,” she breathed. “We must part.”
She was not looking at him and did not listen to what he said in reply. Suddenly her eyelashes began to tremble, and then her eyes filled with tears. She wept silently, her hands on the wheel. When he tried to approach her she moved the car away.
“Now you’re no longer Prokopo-Kopak,” she whispered, “you are an unhappy, unhappy man. You see, you pull at your chain … as I do. It was … a wrong sort of link that joined us, and yet when one tears oneself away it is as if one left everything behind, one’s heart, one’s soul. … Can there be good in a man when he is so empty?” Her tears fell more quickly. “I loved you, and now I shall never see you again. Out of the way, I’m turning round.”
He did not move.
She drew the car close up to him. “Goodbye, Prokop,” she said softly, and began to go backwards along the road. He ran after her, but the car began to retire more and more rapidly.
Then it vanished altogether.
XLVI
He stood still and strained his ears in terror, fearing to hear the sound of the car crashing off the road somewhere at a corner. Was not that the sound of a motor in the distance? Was that terrible and deathly silence the end? Beside himself, Prokop dashed down the road after her. Running down the serpentine road, he finally reached the end of the slope. But not a trace of the car was to be seen. He rushed back again, examining the road on each side, clambered down, tearing his hands whenever he caught sight of anything conspicuous, but it always proved to be only a stone or a bush, and he again scrambled up and pounded along the road, staring into the darkness, in case he should come upon a pile of wreckage, and under it. …
He was again back at the crossroads; it was here that she had begun to disappear into the darkness. He sat down on a milestone. It was quiet, utterly quiet. Above him were the cold stars. Was the dark meteor of the car flying along somewhere? Would there never be a sound, the cry of a bird, the barking of a dog in a village, some sign of life? But everything was bathed in the majestic silence of death. And this was the end, the silent, dark and icy end of everything—a desert surrounded by darkness and silence—an icy desert in which time stood still. If only it were the end of the world! The earth would open and
