Niels really did not know.
“Anything but music!” She bent her face down over her hands and touched her lips to the knuckles, one after the other, the whole row, then back again. “This is the most wretched existence in the world,” she said, looking up. “It isn’t possible to have anything like an adventure, and the small happenings that life has to offer are surely not enough to keep one’s spirits up. Don’t you feel that, too?”
“Well, I can’t suggest anything better than that we act like the Caliph in Arabian Nights. With that silk kimono you are wearing, if you would only wind a white cloth around your head, and let me have your large Indian shawl, we could easily pass for two merchants from Mossul.”
“And what should we two unfortunate merchants do?”
“Go down to Storm Bridge, hire a boat for twenty pieces of gold, and sail up the dark river.”
“Past the sand-chests?”
“Yes, with colored lamps on the masthead.”
“Like Ganem, the Slave of Love.—Oh, I know that line of thought so well! It’s exactly like a man—to get so terribly busy building up scenery and background, forgetting the action itself for the setting. Have you never noticed that women live much less in their imagination than men? We don’t know how to taste pleasure in our fancy or escape from pain with a fanciful consolation. What is, is. Imagination—it is so innocuous. When we get as old as I am now, then sometimes we content ourselves with the poverty-stricken comedy of imagination. But we ought never to do it—never!”
She settled herself languidly on the sofa, half reclining, her hand under her chin, her elbow supported by the cushions. She gazed dreamily out before her, and seemed quite lost in melancholy thoughts.
Niels was silent too, and the room was so quiet that the restless hopping of the canary bird was plainly heard; the great clock ticked and ticked its way through the silence, louder and louder, and a string in the open piano, suddenly vibrating, emitted a long, low, dying note that blended with the softly singing stillness.