“Oh, do go! Can’t you see that you are humiliating me by staying? You are brutal to me, that’s what you are! What have I done to you that you ill-treat me this way? Do go! Have you no pity?”
Pity? He was cold with rage. This was madness! Still he could do nothing but go, and he went. He did not like the two rows of chairs, but he walked slowly between them, looking at them with a fixed gaze of defiance.
“Exit Niels Lyhne,” he said, when he heard the latch of the hall-door click behind him.
He walked down the steps thoughtfully, his hat in his hand. On the landing he stopped and gesticulated to himself: If he could understand the least bit! Why this and why, again, that? Then he walked on. There were the open windows. He felt like tearing to pieces that sickly sweet silence up there with a shrill cry. He felt like talking to some one for hours—mercilessly—talking nonsense into that silence, washing it cold in nonsense. He could not get it out of his blood; he could see it, taste it; he walked in it. Suddenly he stopped and blushed fiery red with angry shame. Had she used him to tempt herself with?
In the room above, Mrs. Boye still was weeping. She had gone over to the pier-glass and stood resting both hands on the console, weeping till the tears dripped from her cheeks down into the pink chamber of a huge sea-shell lying there. She looked at her distorted face as it appeared above the misty spot her breath had formed on the mirror, and traced the course of her tears as they welled out over the rim of the eyes and rolled down. Where did they all come from? She had never cried like this before—yes, once, in Frascati, after a runaway.
Presently the tears began to come more sparingly, but a nervous trembling still shook her spasmodically from neck to heel.
The sun now beat directly on the windows. The tremulous reflections from the waves were drawn aslant under the ceiling, and on the sides of the Venetian blinds the parallel rays fell in rows, forming perfect shelves of yellowish light. The heat increased, and mingling with the ripe smell of hot wood and sun-warmed dust, other scents floated out from the bright flowers of the sofa-cushions, from the silken curves of the chair-backs, from books and folded rugs, where the heat released a hundred forgotten perfumes and wafted them through the air, light as wraiths.
Very slowly her trembling subsided, leaving a curious dizziness, in which fantastic emotions that were more than half sensations whirled around on the tracks of her wondering thoughts. She closed her eyes, but remained standing with her face turned to the mirror.
Strange how it had come over her, this piercing terror! Had she cried out? There was the echo of a scream in her ears and a tired feeling in her throat as if she had emitted a long, anguished cry. If he had taken her! She allowed herself to be taken and pressed her arms against her heart as if to ward him off. She struggled, but yet—now: she felt as if she were sinking naked through the air, blushing, burning with shame, impudently caressed by all the winds of heaven—He would not go, and it would soon be too late; all her strength was leaving her like bubbles that burst; bubble after bubble forced its way between her lips and burst unceasingly; in another second it would be too late! Had she begged him on her knees? Too late! She was lifted irresistibly to his embrace, as a bubble that rises through the water—tremulous, so her soul rose up naked before him, with every wish bared to his gaze, every secret dream, every hidden surrender unveiled before his mastering eye. Again in his arms, lingering, sweetly trembling. There was a statue of alabaster surrounded by flames; it glowed transparent in the heat of the fire; little by little its dark centre melted, until all was luminous light.
Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at her image in the mirror with a discreet smile as at a fellow conspirator before whom she did not wish to commit herself too fully. Then she went around the room gathering together her gloves, hat, and mantilla.