It was all like a paradise—the twittering of the birds, the hubbub of the children, the rustle of the wind in the grass and in the trees, the murmur of the brook in the wood. Everything was innocent, as in Paradise—girls, scantily dressed, came up, spoke to them, and were not ashamed. Everything was chaste, as in Paradise. And cloudless, the sky shone above the forest glades.
Towards evening Elisaveta sat at Trirodov’s. They read poems. Elisaveta loved poems even before she met Trirodov. Who else should love them if not girls? Now she read poems avidly. Whole hours passed by quickly in reading, and the poems gave birth in her to sweet and bitter emotions and passionate dreams.
Perhaps this was so because she was in love; in love she had found a new sun for herself, and she led a new dance round it of dreams, hopes, sorrows, joys, enchantments, and raptures. And, flaunting a rainbow of radiance, this round dance, this naming circle of impetuous emotions, was full of a rich music and vivid colour.
Trirodov caused her to fall in love with the verses of the new poets. She found such enchantments and such disillusions in the fragile music of new poetry, written so happily and so elusively, with a lightness and transparency like those of the dresses that she now loved to wear.
With the harmony of their souls thus achieved, why should they not love one another?
Once, after they had read together some beautiful love-poems, Trirodov remarked:
“Love says ‘No’ to the world, the lyrical ‘No’—marriage says ‘Yes’ to it, the ironic ‘Yes.’ To be in love, to strive, yet not to possess—that is the poetry of love, sweet but illusive. Externally love contradicts the world and conceals its fatal discord. To be together, to say ‘Yes’ to some one, to yield oneself—that is the way in which life reveals its irreconcilable contradictions. And how to be together when we are such solitary souls? And how to yield oneself? Mask after mask falls off, and it is terrible to see Janus-faced actuality. A weariness comes on—what has become of love, that love which had prided itself on being stronger than death?”
“You have had a wife,” said Elisaveta. “You loved her. Everything here is reminiscent of her. She was beautiful.”
Her voice became dark, and the blue flashes under the moist eyelids lit up with a jealous flame. Trirodov smiled and said sadly:
“She left life before the time had come for weariness to make its appearance. My Dulcinea did not want to become Aldonza.”