He recalled the hundred fancies that had held, or failed to hold him in his thirty-eight years; he recalled the women who had loved too little, the women who had loved too much; and, quick upon the recollection, came the consciousness of the disillusion that had inevitably followed upon adventure.
He did not ask himself why these dreams should stir, why these ghosts should materialize and kiss light hands to him in the blue brilliance of this May morning; he realized nothing but that behind them all—a reality in a world of shadows—he saw the eyes of the picture insistently propounding their riddle—the riddle, the question that from youth upward had rankled, inarticulate, in his own soul.
It arose now, renewed, with his acknowledgment of it—the troubling, insistent question that cries in every human brain, sometimes softly, like a child sobbing outside a closed door, sometimes loudly and terribly, like a man in agony. The eternal question ringing through the ages.
He recognized it, clear as the spoken word, in this unknown woman's gaze; and for the first time in all his life the desire to make answer quickened within him. He, who had invariably sought, invariably questioned, suddenly craved to make reply!
An incurable dreamer, the fancy took him and he yielded to its glamour. How delightful to know and study that exquisite face! How fascinating beyond all words to catch the fleeting semblance of his charming Max—to lose it in the woman's seriousness—to touch it again in some gleam of boyish humor! It was a quaint conceit, apart from, untouched by any previous experience. Its subtlety possessed him; existence suddenly took on form and purpose; the depression, the sense of loss dispersed as morning clouds before the sun.
He rose, forgetful of his unfinished meal, his vitality stirring, his curiosity kindling as it had not kindled for years.
What, all things reckoned, stood between him and this alluring study? A boy! A mere boy!
No thought came to him of the boy himself—the instrument of the desire. No thought came; for every human creature is a pure egoist in the first stirring of a passion, and stalks his quarry with blind haste, fearful that at any turn he may be balked by time or circumstance. Later, when grief has chastened, or joy cleansed him, the altruist may peep forth, but never in the primary moment.
With no thought of the clinging hands and beseeching voice of last night—with no knowledge of a mournful figure that had dragged itself up the stairway of the house in the rue Müller and sobbed itself to sleep in a lonely bed, he walked across the room to his writing-table and calmly picked up a pen.
He dipped the pen into the ink and selected a sheet of note-paper; then, as he bent to write, impatience seized him, he tore the paper across and took up a telegraph form.