He got out a piece of mill-board and began to draw her, but to his annoyance could not get interested in what he was doing. He wanted to know more about her, could not rest content that a human being should be so reduced to a cold purpose. Yet, though she talked freely enough, nothing fell from her lips to meet his desire. She had no people, no class, no tradition, but still she was a person. He could not dismiss her as he dismissed so many, as “nonsensical.”
“I can’t make much of you now,” he said, almost wailing. “I believe I’m tired.”
And suddenly he hurled away his drawing and rushed at her and kissed her. She clung to him and he yielded to her will, seeing clearly that this was her purpose, this her desire, this her ambition, her all.
He knew that she was using him, was making certain of being able to use him. The newly discovered knave in him insisted on having his existence, and through it he enjoyed a certain defiant happiness.
Happiness! To be happy! That had seemed impossible. His first year at the Detmold had been miserable. He had been discouraged and almost listless. Often he would go to his mother and say: “I shall never be an artist.”
“Not all at once,” Golda would say. “Take a boy who is apprenticed to a bootmaker. He cannot all at once make good boots. He must spoil a deal of leather first. Or a tailor-boy: he must spoil cloth. A trade must be learned, and you can learn this, for you work hard enough at it.”
For a moment or two he would see through her clear eyes and that was enough to set him working again, half believing that he would soon master his craft. But there had been the struggle to master what at the Detmold, with such unquestionable authority, they called “drawing.”
This now, with Hetty, was in its way happiness, though he detested it and her. It was an escape. It was easy. It made no demands on him, save the small effort to achieve self-forgetfulness, and in that she aided him, for she seemed superior to himself and enviable in the clearness of her purpose. She offered herself and made no demands upon him except of what could cost him nothing: just a few words to his friends, a start in her chosen profession.
All the same, he was horrified at himself. Every other crisis and sudden change in his life had been attended with violent suffering, an eruption within himself, profound depression, almost a collapse. This had been as easy as walking through a door, a slipping from one part of his being to another. . . . Here suddenly was happiness, a queer detached, almost indifferent condition, full of pleasure, and he rejoiced in the novelty of it. He watched Hetty draw on her clothes again and was sickened by the sensual languor of her movements. She was drowsy, like a cat before a fire.
“No, I certainly shan’t draw you to-day.”