Then it happened that one day, without preamble, she admitted that the interest she felt in me was not merely an intellectual one; things had now gone so far that she could think of nothing but me.
My whole nature was shaken to its foundations. Up to this time I had only regarded her as my friend and comforter, had neither felt nor fought against any personal attraction. But she had scarcely spoken, before she was transformed in my eyes. The affection I had thirsted for was offered to me here. The heart I had felt the need of was this heart. And it was not only a heart that was offered me, but a passion that scorned scruples.
In my austere youth hitherto, I had not really had erotic experiences whatever. I had led the chaste life of the intellectual worker. My thoughts had been the thoughts of a man; they had ascended high and had delved deep, but my love affairs had been the enthusiasms and fancies of a half-grown boy, chimeras and dreams. This young woman was my first living erotic reality.
And suddenly, floodgates seemed to open within me. Streams of lava, streams of molten fire, rushed out over my soul. I loved for the first time like a man.
The next few days I went about as if lifted above the earth; in the theatre, in the evening, I could not follow the performance, but sat in the pit with my face in my hands, full of my new destiny, as though my heart would burst.
And yet it was more a physical state, an almost mechanical outcome of what to me was overwhelmingly new, association with a woman. It was not because it was just this particular woman. For my emotional nature was so composite that even in the first moment of my bliss I did not regard this bliss as unmixed. From the very first hour, I felt a gnawing regret that it was not I who had desired her, but she who had chosen me, so that my love in my heart of hearts was only a reflection of hers.
VI.
About this time it so happened that another woman began to engage my thoughts, but in an altogether different manner. Circumstances resulted in my being taken into the secret of unhappy and disturbing domestic relations in a well-to-do house to which I was frequently invited, and where to all outward seeming all the necessary conditions of domestic happiness were present.
The master of the house had in his younger days been a very handsome man, lazy, not clever, and of an exceedingly passionate temper. He was the son of a man rich, worthy and able, but of a very weak character, and of a kept woman who had been the mistress of a royal personage. Through no fault of his own, he had inherited his mother's professional vices, persistent untruthfulness, a comedian's manner, prodigality, a love of finery and display. He was quite without intellectual interests, but had a distinguished bearing, a winning manner, and no gross vices.
His wife, who, for family reasons, had been married to him much too young, had never loved him, and never been suited to him. As an innocent, ignorant girl, she had been placed in the arms of a man who was much the worse for a reckless life, and suffering from an illness that necessitated nursing, and made him repulsive to her. Every day that passed she suffered more from being bound to a man whose slightest movement was objectionable to her and whose every remark a torture. In the second decade of her marriage the keenest marital repulsion had developed in her; this was so strong that she sometimes had to pull herself together in order, despite her maternal feelings, not to transfer her dislike to the children, who were likewise his, and in whom she dreaded to encounter his characteristics.