“That is very true; they are,” Ferdinand agreed. “But the life of man is woven of damnable iterations. Tell me of any single thing that isn’t a damnable iteration, and I’ll give you a quarter of my fortune. The day and the night, the seasons and the years, the fair weather and the foul, breakfast and luncheon and dinner—all are damnable iterations. If there’s any reality behind the doctrine of metempsychosis, death, too, is a damnable iteration. There’s no escaping damnable iterations: there’s nothing new under the sun. But as long as one is alive, one must do something. It’s sure to be something in its essence identical with something one has done before; but one must do something. Why not, then, a love-adventure with a woman that attracts you?”
“Women are a pack of samenesses,” said Hilary despondently.
“Quite so,” assented Ferdinand. “Women, and men too, are a pack of samenesses. We’re all struck with the same die, of the same metal, at the same mint. Our resemblance is intrinsic, fundamental; our differences are accidental and skin deep. We have the same features, organs, dimensions, with but a hair’s-breadth variation; the same needs, instincts, propensities; the same hopes, fears, ideas. One man’s meat is another man’s meat; one man’s poison is another man’s poison. We are as like to one another as the leaves on the same tree. Skin us, and (save for your fat) the most skilled anatomist could never distinguish you from me. Women are a pack of samenesses; but, hang it all, one has got to make the best of a monotonous universe. And this particular woman, with her red hair and her eyes, strikes me as attractive. She has some fire in her composition, some fire and flavour. Anyhow, she attracts me; and—I think I shall try my luck.”
“Oh, Nunky, Nunky,” murmured Hilary, shaking his head, “I am shocked by your lack of principle. Have you forgotten that you are a married man?”
“That will be my safeguard. I can make love to her with a clear conscience. If I were single, she might, justifiably enough, form matrimonial expectations for herself.”
“Not if she knew you,” said Hilary.
“Ah, but she doesn’t know me—and shan’t,” said Ferdinand Augustus. “I will take care of that.”
VI
And then, for what seemed to him an eternity, he never once encountered her. Morning and afternoon, day after day, he roamed the park of Bellefontaine from end to end, in all directions, but never once caught sight of so much as the flutter of her garments. And the result was that he began to grow seriously sentimental. “Im wunderschônen Monat Mai!” It was June, to be sure; but the meteorological influences were, for that, only the more potent. He remembered her shining eyes now as not merely whimsical and ardent, but as pensive, appealing, tender; he remembered her face as a face seen in starlight, ethereal and mystic; and her voice as low music far away. He recalled their last meeting as a treasure he had possessed and lost; he blamed himself for the frivolity of his talk and manner, and for the ineffectual impression of him this must have left upon her. Perpetually thinking of her, he was perpetually sighing, perpetually suffering strange, sudden, half painful, half delicious commotions in the tissues of his heart. Every morning he rose with a replenished fund of hope: this day at last would produce her. Every night he went to bed pitying himself as bankrupt of hope. And all the while, though he pined to talk of her, a curious bashfulness withheld him; so that, between him and Hilary, for quite a fortnight she was not mentioned. It was Hilary who broke the silence.
“Why so pale and wan?” Hilary asked him. “Will, when looking well won’t move her, looking ill prevail?”