“Yes; I received one letter. She has left the Riviera, and is in Paris now, where she intends to winter along with her husband. Wildenhoff has won a good deal of money, playing at Monte Carlo; and both of them are now spending it, each of them apart.”
“And her nerves, how are they?”
“In perfect condition. She has left all her tears in the sea behind her.... That woman has an uncommonly happy disposition——”
Here followed a short but mournful pause, broken by the entrance of Radlowski, a painter who had been her fellow-student in Munich.
He noticed that my complexion was strikingly out of the common, and begged I would sit for my portrait.
Witold thinks that, of all the women he ever knew, I am the most intelligent. Before he made my acquaintance, he had been climbing up a regular ladder of emotions, of which Martha had formed the topmost rung. I, it appears, form a sort of synthesis of all his loves; I am at the same time the most beloved humanly speaking, and as a woman the most desired of all. He would not have me other than I am in any way.—As to this last, I wish I could say the same of him.
And yet I would not exactly have him changed—rather transformed and become another person. It seems that to be as lack-brained as an animal is not sufficient: one must besides have some primitive instincts, one must have some vigour.... What I need now, perforce and irresistibly, is matchless strength—the strength of a hurricane, of a cyclone, of some great natural force let loose.
He loves to talk with me on intellectual matters. “No one can understand his soul so well as I.”
Silent and with eyes cast down, I listen for some time to his commonplaces, uttered indeed in elaborately chosen words, and in a manner not commonplace. And I ponder. I gaze on him—on that mouth so perfectly shaped, so intensely sweet, just a little faded, it seems; and on those eyes which, beneath the tawny lashes that shade them, are so bright with the fever and the melancholy of lassitude, so full of the irresistible charm which surrounds all that is coming to an end, though you would have it remain as beautiful as only youth’s dream can be. And it is then—when he has not the slightest inkling of what I feel—that I love him most of all.
To-day I was sorry for him—sorry for all those desires of his, doomed to burn themselves out, never any more to be kindled.