"Women are not philosophers. I—" She stopped. Her fingers played nervously with the pearl necklace that rose and fell on her bosom. He found himself noting its details, wondering that she had developed such extravagant tastes. Then, awaking to her distress, he said quietly, "Then there is no hope for me?"
Her face retained its look of pain.
"Not ever? You could never—?" His cough shook him.
"If there had been no other," she murmured, and her eyes drooped half-apologetically towards the necklace.
The bitterness of death was in his soul. He had a sudden ironic sense of a gap in his mathematical philosophy. He had fathomed the secret of Being, had analyzed and unified all things from everlasting to everlasting, yet here was an isolated force—a woman's will—that stood obstinately between him and happiness. He seemed to visualize it, behind her serious face, perversely mocking.
The handle of the door turned, and a young man came in. He was in the pink of fashion—a mantle of Venetian silk disposed in graceful folds about his handsome person, his neckcloth of Flanders lace, his knee-breeches of satin, his shoes gold-buckled, his dagger jewelled. Energy flashed from his eye, vigor radiated from his every movement.
"Ah, Diedrich!" she cried, as her face lit up with more than relief. "Here is Heer Spinoza at last. This is Heer Kerkkrinck!"
"Spinoza!" A thrill of awe was in the young man's voice, the reverence of the consciously stupid for the great brains of the earth. He did not take Spinoza's outstretched hand in his but put it to his lips.
The lonely thinker and the happy lover stood thus for an instant, envying and admiring each other. Then Spinoza said cordially, "And now that I have had the pleasure of meeting Heer Kerkkrinck I must hurry back to town ere the road grows too dark."
"But father expects thee to sup with us," murmured Klaartje.