“Today, on my morning walk, I saw a beautiful woman … God, she was beautiful!” And he laid his head to one side, and opened his hands.
“Indeed, Herr Spinell? But you must describe her to me!”
“No, that is impossible. For I should give you an unjust picture of her. I caught the woman in passing, with just half a glance; I didn’t really see her. But the effaced shadow of her that I received was enough to start me going and to let me carry away a picture that is beautiful … God, it is beautiful!”
She laughed. “Is that your way of observing beautiful women, Herr Spinell?”
“Yes, and it is a better way than if I stared like some crude reality-monger into their faces and carried away the impression of a miserable collection of facts …”
“Reality-monger … That is a queer word! A genuine author’s word, Herr Spinell! But it appeals to me, if I may say so. There is so much in it which I understand somewhat, something free and independent which is a challenge to our servitude to the actual … although it is nevertheless the most respectable thing imaginable, the very soul of respectability. … And then, I understand that there is something beyond the tangible, something more tender …”
“I know of only one face,” he began suddenly, with an unusually happy note in his voice, raising his clenched hands to his shoulders and letting an exalted smile expose his large teeth; “I know of only one face where it would be a crime for me to think of correcting the noble reality with imagination … one face which I should be content to gaze at, to dwell upon, not minutes, not hours, but my entire life … to lose myself in it, and be made to forget everything of this earth …”
“Yes, yes, Herr Spinell! The only thing is that Fräulein von Osterloh has somewhat disagreeable ears.”
He said nothing, bowing deeply. As he stood erect again, his eyes rested with an expression of embarrassment and anguish on the peculiar little vein which branched pale blue and sickly across the clarity of her almost transparent forehead.
VII
Really, a quite remarkable sort! Herr Klöterjahn’s wife would think about him now and then, since she had a good deal of time for thinking. Whether it was that the change of air was beginning to lose its effect, or that some actually harmful influence was asserting itself, the condition of her trachea would certainly have been better; she became weak, tired, without much appetite, and occasionally had a fever. Dr. Leander was most emphatic in insisting that she remain quiet, take plenty of rest, and be very careful of herself. So that when she did not have to be lying down, she would sit quietly near the Rätin Spatz, with some needlework forgotten in her lap, and thinking of something or other.
Yes, he had set her to thinking … this strange Herr Spinell. But the remarkable thing was that she didn’t think so much of him as of herself. Somehow or other, he had created in her an unusual curiosity, an interest she had never felt before, in her own person.
One day, in the course of a conversation, he had said: “No, they are puzzling things, women are. Old as the question is, you can’t help considering it in astonishment. Some wonderful creature, a nymph, a vision, a being out of some fairy dream. And what does she do? Goes off and surrenders herself to some champion at a county fair, or some butcher’s boy. She comes along on his arm, perhaps even leans her head against his shoulder, and looks about her with a sly smile, as if to say: ‘Now then, you can go break your hearts about it!’ And we do go and break our hearts.”
While he was saying this, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife had been very occupied.
Another day, to the great astonishment of the Rätin Spatz, the following dialogue took place between them:
“I wonder if I might dare to ask you—although it is very impertinent—what your name is, your true name?”
“Why, my name is Klöterjahn, Herr Spinell!”
“Hm. I knew that. Or rather, I challenge it. For, of course, I mean your real name, your maiden-name. You will be fair enough to grant me, I hope, that anyone who would address you as ‘Frau Klöterjahn’ would deserve to be thrashed.”
She laughed so heartily that the tiny blue vein over her eyebrow stood out with painful clarity, and gave her sweet, tender face an expression of effort and fatigue which was deeply disquieting.
“No! Surely not, Herr Spinell. To be thrashed? Does ‘Klöterjahn’ seem so awful to you?”
“Yes, I have hated this name from the bottom of my heart from the moment I first heard it. It is farcical, and frightfully homely; and it would be cruel and abject if one were to carry the accepted usage so far as to apply your husband’s name to you.”
“Well, and ‘Eckhof’? Is
