2
They stayed long talking to each other; and no one came to disturb them. The child had gone back to sit by the window. Twilight began to strew pale ashes in the room. He saw Cecile sitting there, sweetly white; the kindly melody of her half-breathed words came rippling towards him. They talked of many things: of Emerson; of Van Eeden’s new poem in the Nieuwe Gids; of their respective views of life. He accepted a cup of tea, only for the pleasure of seeing her move with the yielding lines of her graciousness, standing before the tea-table in the corner. In her white dress, she had something about her of marble grown lissom with inspiration and warm life. He sat motionless, listening reverently, swathed in a still rapture of delight. It was a mood which defied analysis, without a visible origin, springing from their sympathetic fellowship as a flower springs from an invisible seed after a drop of rain and a kiss of the sunshine. She too was happy; she no longer felt the pain which his reverence had caused her. True, she was a little sad by reason of what he had told her, but she was happy for the sake of this speck of the present. Nor did she any longer see that dark stream, that inky sky, that night landscape: everything that she now saw was bright and calm. And happiness breathed about her, a tangible happiness, like a living caress. Sometimes they ceased speaking and both of them looked towards the child, as it sat reading; or Christie would ask them something and they would answer. Then they smiled one to the other, because the child was so good and did not disturb them.
“If only this could continue for ever,” he ventured to say, though still fearing lest a word might break the crystalline transparency of their happiness. “If you could only see into me now, how all in me is peace. I don’t know why, but that is how I feel. Perhaps because of your forgiveness. Really the Catholic religion is delightful, with its absolution. What a comfort that must be for people of weak character!”
“But I cannot think your character weak. And it is not. You tell me that you sometimes know how to place yourself above ordinary life, whence you can look down upon its grief as on a comedy which makes one laugh sadly for a minute, but which is not true. I too believe that life, as we see it, is no more than a symbol of a truer life, concealed beneath it, which we do not see. But I cannot rise beyond the symbol, while you can. Therefore you are very strong and feel yourself very great.”
“How strange, when I just think myself weak and you great and powerful. You dare to be what you are, in all your harmony; and I am always hiding and am afraid of people individually, though sometimes I am able to rise above life in the mass. But these are riddles which it is vain for me to attempt to solve; and, though I have not the power to solve them, at this moment I feel nothing but happiness. Surely I may say that once aloud, may I not, quite aloud?”
She smiled to him in the bliss which she felt of making him happy.
It is the first time I have felt happiness in this way,” he continued. “Indeed it is the first time I have felt it at all....”
“Then don’t analyse it.”
“There is no need. It is standing before me in all its simplicity. Do you know why I am happy?”
“Don’t analyse, don’t analyse,” she repeated in alarm.
“No,” he said, “but may I tell you, without analysing?”
“No, don’t,” she stammered, “because ... because I know....”
She besought him, very pale, with folded, trembling hands. The child looked at them; it had closed its book, and come to sit down on its stool by its mother, with a look of gay sagacity in its pale-blue eyes.
“Then I obey you,” said Quaerts, with some difficulty.
And they were both silent, their eyes expanded as with the lustre of a vision. It seemed to be gently beaming about them through the pale ashen twilight.