He felt the singular clarity and depth of mind claimed by the mystic after a long period of fasting and prayer. All his senses were at their keenest and seemed to work without obstruction. None of the incoherence and clumsiness of reality were present to him; life seemed an easy and an exquisite thing radiant with love and beauty.
He gazed at Margot’s face and noted one by one its gracious curves, the little lift of the lips, the line of her chin, the soft brown hair that shadowed her low forehead; it seemed as if her face was new to him, and he was looking at it for the first time. It was thinner than usual, and there were dark purple shadows under her eyes. She worked quickly and as if absorbed; but no movement of Jean’s escaped her; she seemed to see without lifting her eyelids that he was awake, and when she raised them at length to greet him, Jean felt as if he had been taken into a strong place full of sunshine.
He gave a little sigh of pleasure.
“You’ve been very good to me, Margot,” he said. “And how pretty everything in the room is. I don’t believe there’s such a neat or charming place in Paris!”
The soft colour came into Margot’s cheeks; she had to perfection the Frenchwoman’s talent for the management of things. Material was always docile to her, and she had kept Jean’s room like a shrine. His praise was as unaccustomed as it was sweet, for Jean had been too absorbed in his own life before to realise how many of its conveniences he owed to someone else.
To-day he seemed to be seeing the past in fresh colours. What a stupid world he had lived in! Everyone had tried to get the better of everyone else, people had thought so much of money; he had himself—not of the money perhaps—but of what it could buy. Stupid things like admiration, fine clothes, and inconceivably uninteresting social successes! He had not thought of music, of beauty, or of the hard Spartan magnificent triumphs of the spirit. He had worked hard for the spirit, fought for the spirit, and then somehow or other, he did not yet know how, other things had kept coming in. He had been pushed away from his goal—music had forsaken him. He had played accompaniments, and worst of all, stupidest of all, had been his feeling for Liane—he shivered as he thought of it. How cruel she had been, and how indifferent to that vague foolish passion of his poured out at her feet so unnecessarily—for it was not the kind of thing Liane wanted. It was wasted; she had not cared for his soul. It seemed to him now the most idle and incredible folly, and he forgot the force of his passion as completely as one forgets last year’s toothache. He felt as if he had reached a new system of values, one in which it would be no longer difficult to do without, because by doing so he would come into an inheritance of things more precious, clear solitude for work, freedom from the strain of the uncongenial, and entire repudiation of the whole material world. In fact, it was the Higher Life again, only this time Jean called it art and not religion. He was a little more human over it too, because he allowed it to include the friendship of Margot.
He could not remember his illness very distinctly, but he knew that her voice had sounded like music, and her touch had been cool and soft, and that somehow, just when things had been at their worst, she had made them better.
He did not know why it was, but he felt vaguely better and safer if she were in the room; even the keen kindly eyes of the doctor did not give him the sense of support that he found in Margot’s. He felt that there was in her something indestructibly strong, and that it was there for his use.
Jean put out his hand towards her and she let her sewing fall into her lap while she covered it.
“It is nearly time for you to have your broth, Jean,” she said.