He was beyond laughter. For him laughter was for trivial things. She had stopped the flow of his thoughts, the rush of his emotions up into his creative consciousness. Wave upon wave of passion surged through him, racked him, tortured him, tossing his soul this way and that, threatening to hurl it down and smash it on the hardness of his nature. He set his teeth and would not wince. If she could laugh she could know nothing of that. She was shallow, she was young. . . . Was it because he was a Jew that he seemed so old compared with her? . . . What was it she lacked that she could laugh and leave him to the torment she had provoked?
But she was aware of the curious blankness that had come over his end of their twilight silence, and she suffered from it, thinking: “Am I an awful woman? Can I give nothing?” And she turned to him to give, and give all the rare treasures of her soul, of her heart, to lay them before him for his delight. But what she had already given had let loose a storm in him that blotted out all the beauty of the scene, all the loveliness of their love, the gift and the taking of it, and left him with only the dim light of her purity.
Soon the storm passed and they had nothing but an easy delight in each other’s company, each turning to each as to a warm fire by which to laugh and talk and make merry.
He told her stories of his childhood, of his brothers and his father, and Mr. Kuit, the thief, who had bought him his first suit; of his childish joy in painting, and there he stopped short. Of his misery he was unable to speak.
“You do believe in yourself,” she said.
“Why not?” he replied; “I am a man. When I hold my hands before my eyes they are real. They are flesh and blood. I must believe in them. And I am all flesh and blood. I must believe.”
“And everything else is real to you.”
“Everything that I love is real. And what I do not love I hate, so that is real too.”
They wandered about the Heath until night came and the stars shone, and then they plunged into the glitter of London, where all people and things were deliciously fantastic and comic, flat and kinematographic, as though, if you walked round to the other side, you would discover that they were painted on one side only. It gave them the glorious illusion of being the only two living people in the world, for they and only they had loved since the world began, and all the other lovers were only people in a story, living happily ever after or coming to an end of their love, neither of which could happen to them because they were, always had been, and always would be in love.
They dined at the Pot-au-Feu, where they encountered Mitchell, who had the effrontery to come and speak to them. He was very friendly and spoke as though nothing had happened. They told him they had been to Hampstead and recommended him to try it when he found London too stuffy.