He himself was held, and rightly held, to be a man of intellect, less by virtue of rapid perception and flexible thought, than by virtue of a coolly observant vision of the world, incapable of being confused—a certain healthy cynicism which, though it never lost an element of good nature, might yet abash and even chill the souls of men.
His actual knowledge, however, had remained mere wretched patchwork, his logic came to an end wherever bold reliance upon the intuitive process was needed to supply missing links in the ratiocinative chain.
And so it came to pass that Alice, whom at first he had regarded as his scholar, his handiwork, his creature, had developed annoyingly beyond him…. Involuntarily and innocently she delivered the keenest thrusts. He had, actually, to be on guard…. In the irresponsible delight of intellectual crudity she solved the deepest problems of humanity; she repeated, full of faith, the judgments of the ephemeral rapid writer, instead of venturing upon the sources of knowledge. Yet even so she impressed him by her faculty of adaptation and her shining zeal. He was often silenced, for his slow moving mind could not follow the vagaries of that rapid little brain.
What would she be at again to-day? "The old gossip Cicero…." And, "Mme. de Sévigné remarks…." What a rattling and tinkling. It provoked him.
And her love! … That was a bad business. What is one to do with a mistress who, before falling asleep, is capable of lecturing on Schopenhauer's metaphysics of sex, and will prove to you up to the hilt how unworthy it really is to permit oneself to be duped by nature if one does not share her aim for the generations to come?
The man is still to be born upon whom such wisdom, uttered at such an hour—by lips however sweet—does not cast a chill.
Since that philosophical night he had left untouched the little key that hung yonder over his desk and that give him, in her house, the sacred privileges of a husband. And so his life became once more a hunt after new women who filled his heart with unrest and with the foolish fires of youth.
But Alice had never been angry at him. Apparently she lacked nothing….
And his thoughts wandered from her to the woman who had lain against his breast to-night, shuddering in her stolen joy.
Heavens! He had almost forgotten one thing!