The anteroom was saturated with the smell of cooking. A dirty towel lay on the table. Sophie snatched it up and hid it behind her back. John Hubert took shorter leave of her than usual.
In the street he tried to think of Sophie’s pretty face, but the odour of the kitchen and the dirty towel upset him unpleasantly. He began to think of Simon Hosszu’s various plans. He could not understand what they amounted to. Now that he presented Hosszu’s plans in his own language they seemed less convincing. They became dim and risky. He had to drop one after the other. The facts, no longer distorted by eloquence, glared at him soberly in their real light.
After supper he remained alone with his father in the green room; they spoke of various firms and enterprises; he beat round the bush for a long time.
Christopher Ulwing watched his son attentively, with knitted brows. When John Hubert mentioned the name of Simon Hosszu, the expectant expression disappeared from the builder’s face. He leaned back in his chair.
“Simon Hosszu is in a pretty bad way; he has exhausted his credit everywhere,” and then he added, indifferently, as if speaking casually: “It is curious, up to now he has spared us. I can’t understand what he has in mind.”
John Hubert could not help thinking of Mrs. Hosszu, who knitted and never looked up, who left the room and appeared unexpectedly in the door. His father’s voice rang in his ear: what had they in mind?... And Sophie? No, she was not in the conspiracy. He acquitted the girl in his mind. He felt distinctly that she was very dear to him.
His bedroom was beyond that of the children. Everything there was as perfectly in its place as the necktie on his collar. On the dressing table, brushes, combs, bottles, jars, all arranged in order.
John Hubert counted the money in his purse. He thought how his most cherished wishes had always been curbed. Now he burnt the natural desire of a virile man, which in his case was mingled with the fear of its imminent disappearance; the knowledge that the hours of his manhood were already numbered sharpened his craving. He longed for woman with an intensity of which youth is incapable. He wished for a woman bending to his will, weaker than he, and the memory of a little sempstress crossed his mind. How he had loved her, for his dominion over her and.... Then Sophie’s image abruptly became confused with the fading picture of the poor simple girl.
Without any continuity he thought of his children. “Would Sophie be a good mother to them?” He asked himself in vain. He could not answer the question. Mrs. Hosszu, the dirty towel, Simon Hosszu’s bad reputation, his shady propositions, his dangerous plausibility.... That influence frightened him and it became clear to him that henceforth his desire would be restrained by two hostile forces, the builder’s will and his own sober brain. In his mind’s eye he saw Sophie’s lovely shaded eyes looking at him. They reproached him gently, just as the eyes of the other girl had done on the day they parted. John Hubert felt a bitter pain rend him from head to foot. The old pain, the pain of thwarted hopes so familiar to him since his youth.
Past and present were all the same to him. He would not make a clean cut between the two and he just had to continue to curb the aspirations of his soul. The ray of light that had shone on him during the past few months was now extinguished.