“I can’t make this out,” I said, chaffingly. “You must have made an awful hit with Frosine. Why don’t you marry the girl?”
He looked startled.
“Don’t be absurd. Why, I’m twenty years older than she is. Besides, I’m a cripple. Besides, I’m a confirmed bachelor. Besides, she’s a confirmed widow.”
“No young woman’s ever a confirmed widow. Besides—she’s no widow.”
“Good Heavens! You don’t mean to tell me Solonge is—”
“Why, yes, I thought you knew. Anyway, there was no reason to tell you anything like that.”
Helstern rose slowly. My information seemed to be exceedingly painful to him. That firm mouth with its melancholy twist opened as if to speak. Then, without saying a word, he took his hat and went off.
“After all,” I thought, “why not? Frosine is as good as gold, a serene, sensible woman. I’d marry her myself if I wasn’t already married to Anastasia. I wonder....”
Thereupon I started upon my career as a matchmaker. Why is it that the married man is so anxious to induce others to embrace matrimony? Is it a sense of duty, a desire to prevent other men shirking their duty? Or (as no woman is perfect) is it a desire to see the flies in our ointment outnumbered by the flies in our neighbour’s? Or, as marriage is a meritorious compulsion to behave, is it a desire to promote merit among our bachelor friends by making them behave also? In any case, behold me as a bachelor stalker, Helstern my first quarry. I did not see him for a week, then one afternoon I came across him by the great gloomy pile of the Pantheon, gazing at Rodin’s statue of the Thinker.
How often have I stood in front of it myself! That figure fascinates me as does no other in modern sculpture. The essence of simplicity, it seems to say unutterable things. Arms of sledge-hammer force, a great back corded with muscle, legs banded as if with iron, could anything be more expressive of magnificent strength? Yet, oh, the pathos of it—the small, undeveloped skull, the pose of perplexed, desperate thought!