I sit for a long time, spending the evening with Imszanski. And I enjoy myself. Although I do not for one instant forget her, that graceful melancholy woman, who now is wandering through the magnificent apartments of her lonely dwelling, always awaiting him, though she knows he will not come, and at the slightest noise rushing to the ante-chamber, listening with her ear close against the door, and her brain on fire with excitement. But the billows of undisturbed stillness are beating all around her.... And then she goes back to her rooms, and seats herself upon an easy-chair, and again upon a lounge, trying to fall asleep; and to keep herself from sobbing aloud, she bites her fingers hard.... And in a little while she goes once again and listens at the ante-chamber door. For now I am no longer by her side; now she is quite, quite alone; and so cruelly abandoned!
Not for an instant do I forget all this; and yet I enjoy myself. The faint bitterness of this tragedy gives, I suppose, an additional flavour to our amorous and delightful dalliance.
Witold would prefer not to speak of the subject, which I nevertheless bring forward again and again.
“But tell me now, how could you behave with such abominable baseness, forcing yourself into Martha’s life so? For you married her under downright compulsion: I well remember that she resisted with all her might. Were you at the time really in love with her?”
“She attracted me extremely, and I was puzzled by her great love for virginity. Never before had I found any woman with the instinct developed to such a degree. And I was then in a romantic, an idealistic, a Platonic mood, with which Martha harmonized to perfection.”
“Well, and how was it that this mood of yours came to alter so quickly?”
“I found Martha just a little disappointing: and even at the time when I married her I was quite sure that she could not satisfy me for long. All that alluring mystery of her ascetic philosophy of life merely proceeded from anæmia and poverty of temperament.”
“Witold! Witold! do go back to her again. For remember; I shall never love you as she does.”
“No, I will not; I will not,” and he gathered me in his arms: “I will not leave you, nor would I, even if you came to hate me. Besides: what, in this whole affair, has pained Martha most? Why, it is your leaving us. She is always sitting in your room; and she very often talks of you, and wonders why you don’t come.”
I had reached the conclusion that all Witold had said was but of a piece with the rest of Martha’s behaviour, studiously correct in regard of him: but I have got a letter from her to-day.