“And then Hardie had a friend who is very highly respected—oh, extremely so, and they all thought I ought to do it and wished it so much, and then you see I could take my position in society just as before, or really better than before, because he is so very highly respected in every way, and after all that is what I have been wishing for a long time. I suppose you can’t understand that? You would never have thought it of me? Quite the contrary. Because I was always making fun of conventional society with its banalities and its stereotyped morality, its thermometer of virtue and its compass of womanliness—you remember how witty we were! It is to weep, Niels, for it wasn’t true, at least not all the time. I will tell you something: we women can break away for a while, when something in our lives has opened our eyes to the love of freedom that after all is in us, but we can’t keep it up. It is in our blood, this passion for the quintessence of propriety and the pinnacle of gentility up to its most punctilious point. We can’t bear to be at war with the established order that is accepted by all commonplace people. In our inmost selves we really think these people are right, because they are the ones that sit in judgment, and in our hearts we bow to their judgments and suffer from them, no matter how brave a face we wear. It is not natural for us women to be exceptional, not really, Niels, it makes us so queer, more interesting, perhaps, but still—Can you understand it? It is silly, don’t you think so? But at least you can comprehend that it made a strange impression on me to return to the old surroundings. So many things came back to me, memories of my mother and of her standards. It seemed as though I had come into a safe haven again; everything was so peaceful and well ordered, and I had only to bind myself to it to be properly happy ever after. And so I let them bind me, Niels.”
Niels could not help smiling; he felt so superior, and was so sorry for her, as she stood there, girlishly unhappy in the midst of all this confession. He was softened and could not find any hard words.
Meanwhile she had turned the chair toward her and had sunk down on it, and now she was sitting there quite forlorn and pathetic, leaning back with arms hanging and face lifted, gazing out under lowered eyelids through the darkened parlor with its two rows of chairs into the dim ante-room.
Niels laid his arm along the back of the chair and rested his hand on its arm, as he bent over her. “And you had quite forgotten—me?“ he whispered.
She seemed not to hear him and did not even lift her eyes, but at last she shook her head, very faintly, and, after another long pause, shook it again, very faintly.
Round about them everything was very still at first. Then a maid came clattering along the halls and singing, as she polished the door-locks; the noise of the knobs turning cut brutally into the silence and made it seem deeper than before when it suddenly came back. After a while, nothing was heard except the drowsy, monotonous tapping of the blinds.
The silence seemed to rob them of the power of speech, almost of thought. She sat as before with her eyes fixed on the dim ante-room, while he remained standing, bending over her, gazing at the pattern of her silk dress, and, unconsciously, lured by the enveloping stillness, he began to rock her in the chair—very—softly—very—softly....
She lifted her eyelids for a look at his shadowed profile, and lowered them again in quiet content. It was like a long embrace; it was as though she gave herself into his arms when the chair went back, and when it swung forward again, and her feet touched the floor, there was something of him in the pressure of the boards against her foot. He felt it too; the process began to interest him, and he rocked more and more vigorously. It was as though he came nearer and nearer to taking her as he drew the chair farther back; there was anticipation in the instant when it was about to plunge forward again, and when it came down there was a strange satisfaction in the soft tap of her passive feet against the floor; then when he pushed it down yet a little farther there was complete possession in the action which pressed her sole gently against the floor and forced her to raise her knee ever so slightly.
“Let us not dream!” said Niels at last with a sigh and relinquished the chair.