Life did not exist for Nicholas Golwein as a matter of day and after day—it was flung at him from time to time as a cloak is flung a flunkey, and this made him proud, morose, silent.
Was it not somehow indecent that, after his forgiveness and understanding, there should be the understanding and forgiveness of another?
There was undoubtedly something cruel about Nelly Grissard’s love; she took at random, and Nicholas Golwein had been the most random, perhaps, of all. The others, before him, had all been of her own class—the first had even married her, and when she finally drove him to the knife’s edge, had left her a fair fortune. Nicholas Golwein had always earned his own living, he was an artist and lived as artists live. Then Nelly came—and went—and after him she had again taken one of her own kind, a wealthy Norwegian—Nord, a friend of Nicholas’.
Sometimes now Nicholas Golwein would go off into the country, trying to forget, trying to curb the tastes that Nelly’s love had nourished. He nosed out small towns, but he always came hurriedly back, smelling of sassafras, the dull penetrating odour of grass, contact with trees, half-tamed animals.
The country made him think of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony—he would start running—running seemed a way to complete all that was sketchy and incomplete about nature, music, love.
“Would I recognize God if I saw him?” The joy of thinking such thoughts was not every man’s, and this cheered him.
Sometimes he would go to see Nord; he was not above visiting Nelly’s lover—in fact there was that between them.
He had fancied death lately. There was a tremendously sterile quality about Nicholas Golwein’s fancies; they were the fancies of a race, and not of a man.
He discussed death with Nord—before the end there is something pleasant in a talk of a means to an end, and Nord had the coldness that makes death strong.
“I can hate,” he would say, watching Nord out of the corner of his eye; “Nelly can’t, she’s too provincial——”