“Oh, dear! Et tu! And it was to you I came on purpose to get a rest from it. There must be some fatality about all this—the atmosphere is vitiated everywhere.... Stephen, have mercy, have mercy!”
He smiled compassionately.
“So soon as that? Janka, how soon you get tired!”
We went to a café, where we saw Gina sitting along with Radlowski at one of the tables. There were none vacant, so we joined them at theirs, and I introduced the men to each other. Wiazewski objects to artists; but he must have been pleased with this one, whose exterior is that of a typical “gentleman.” I was in exceedingly good spirits, and set about flirting with the painter. He was now much changed from what he was when I saw him last. His eyes are not bright any more, and he looks a good deal older. We fell to talking upon speculative subjects, and I strove to be original and sparkling. Radlowski’s eyes were fixed steadfastly on my face all the while.
“Well, I see you are far more of a woman than I had ever thought you.”
My answer to these words of Stephen’s was only a look, but a look of triumph. At last it had come—this, the hardest of all victories to win!... Unfortunately, it came too late....
“In a few years,” he added, “when all your faculties are duly balanced, you will be an exceptional being. Perhaps a model ‘Woman of the Future.’”
“Oh, anything but that. I take no interest except in what goes on within me. If I am at all elated, it is not on account of what is there, but of the fact that these forces are incessantly in conflict with my will. I am proud of my imperfections which turn to perfections, of my ideas which treat one another with mutual contempt, of my instincts, so strongly opposed to my logic; of my atavistic tendencies, which it is a finer and more momentous work to unearth and to note down than to put into practice. I am proud of the eternal Becoming, teeming with riches, dazzling with the wildest hues, deafening with harsh discordancies, rushing on, moving hither and thither, turning in spiral ascension, or even spinning round. Yes, I am proud that this Becoming still goes on. I prefer a hundred times the ‘Transitional Woman’ to the ‘Woman of the Future’: for she who is transitional promises ever so much more than the other, when perfect, can fulfil.
“Neither you,” I said, turning to Gina, “with your quasi-Pantheistic theory of love; nor Madame Wildenhoff, with her volatile and almost man-like eroticism; nor Idalia, nor Martha—none of you is, any more than I am, a woman of the future; you are full of exaggerated theories, of crotchets, of false notions, of atavistic trends and extreme views. Yet I prefer you to that free and happy woman of our dreams, in whom desire, conscious and in perfect equilibrium, will not, however intense it may be, trespass beyond the limits of its possibility to be satisfied. Yes! You I prefer to the most perfect of standards, to the very best of patterns, to the wisest and most consistent of—Philistines!”
Gina said gloomily: