Two days have passed, but I am no nearer understanding. I go round and round in an empty circle, and say to myself, “Jeanne and Malthe—Malthe and Jeanne.” And I expect to be overcome by a heart-rending agony. But so far as I can judge, neither my heart nor my mind are affected. My nerves, too, are perfectly composed. I am, in fact, only petrified with astonishment.
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Why don’t I suffer? What has become of the love I once felt. Where is it?—or—I understand those two so exactly. It’s myself that I don’t understand. I can give them my blessing with the easiest and most serene conscience in the world. I can even rejoice that these two, just these two, have found each other so futile; then am I so inexplicably, egregiously futile?
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I have begun to take delight in travelling by the Subway. People there don’t pose. They are in too great a hurry to put on masks. Extraordinary how impressive breeding is when it is united with good clothes. The train can be so full that there is often a double row extending from one end of the car to the other, hanging on to the round leather rings with coarse, toil-worn, or delicate kid-gloved hands. Some one always makes room for me, but I also take my time to form the desired expression on my face. To-day a poor woman sat next to me with two or three little wreaths on her lap. She wore a dusty mourning veil thrown over her hair.
She cried the whole way; the veil was so shabby that I calculated the child must have died a long time ago. Her grief was still fresh. Mine has never existed. I had thought my life at least contained what is called a great sorrow. But I have only draped an empty space with the trappings of sorrow....
I must write to Jeanne.
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Dear Little Travelling Companion,