He stood at one door, Karen at the opposite one. She lowered her head, and said in a toneless voice: “It’s crazy—me talking to you this way—so familiar and all.” And her face showed both hatred and fear.
When she was alone beside her bed, she lost herself in the contemplation of the picture of the woman with the pearls. Once she turned around, and looked wildly into the other room, to the spot where Christian had stood.
And Christian could not forget her words and the way she had said: “Oh, then....”
XXIX
Weikhardt had been working at his Descent from the Cross for two years, yet he could not finish the picture. No effort, no absorption, no lonely contemplation, no spiritual seeking would bring him the expression on the face of Christ.
He could not create that expression—the compassion and the pain.
He had scratched the face from the canvas a hundred times; he had tried many models; he had spent hours and days studying the old masters; he had made hundreds and hundreds of sketches; he had tried and tried. It was all in vain; he could not create it.
In the spring he had married Helen Falkenhaus, the girl of whom he had once spoken to Imhof. Their married life was a quiet one. Their means were small, and they had to be content with very little. Helen bore every privation with great sweetness. Her piety, which often had a touch of expectant passion, helped her to ease her husband of the consciousness of his burdens and responsibilities.
She had an understanding of art, a high and fine perception of its qualities. He showed her his sketches, and she thought many of them very beautiful. At times he seemed to her to have come near the vision of which she too had a glimpse; but she was forced to admit that he never quite embodied it. He attained compassion and pain, but not the compassion and the pain of Christ.