“Berthe, tu es une brave fille!”
“Tu trouves?”
“Oui.”
More inaction followed on Tarr’s part. She sometimes thought he enjoyed these ceremonies.
Through girlhood her strong senses had churned away at her, and claimed an image from her gentle and dreamy mind. In its turn the mind had accumulated its impressions of men, fancies from books and conversations, and made its hive. So her senses were presented with the image that was to satisfy and rule them. They flung themselves upon it as she had flung herself upon Tarr.
This image left considerable latitude. Tarr had been the first to fit—rather paradoxically, but all the faster for that.
This “high standard Aryan female,” as Tarr described her, had arrived, with him, at the full and headlong condition we agree to name “love.” The image, or type, was thrown away. The individual took its place.
Bertha had had several sweethearts before Tarr. They had all left the type-image intact. At most it had been a little blurred by them. It had almost been smashed for one man, physically resembling Tarr. But he had never got quite near enough to do that. Tarr had characteristically supposed this image to have little sharpness of outline left. He thought it would not be a very difficult matter for any one to extort its recognitions.
“Vous êtes à mon goût, Sorbet. Du bist mein gesmack,” she would say.
Tarr was not demonstrative when she said this. He could not reciprocate. And he could not help reflecting whether to be “her taste” was very flattering. There must be something the matter with him.