“I doubt whether so much trouble is very profitable,” I return. “The game is hardly worth the candle.”
“And yet some there are,” he goes on to say, “for whom present bliss has no value, if they know beforehand that the morrow will take it away. And they often prefer to renounce it entirely.”
The words are spoken calmly, without any apparent significance; yet there is in their tone, I fancy, an under-current of ominous import.
“Well,” I say, repressing my irrational dread, “then let all such take care to marry with judgment.”
“Nevertheless, to give love and get in its place only intellectuality is not a good bargain, I fear.”
Now—now I understand—and I almost feel hatred for the man. Yes, I may throw myself under the wheels of a locomotive, but never will I say I do that out of love for it!
“Reasonable people should remember that ‘the heart is no servant,’ and that, beyond intellectual and conscious resolve, we can find nothing on which we can safely count.” This I say, as light-heartedly and as smilingly as I can, feeling meanwhile the dismay of a horrible misgiving—almost a certitude—clutching at my heart.
And now at last I am alone with Roslawski and Obojanski. I remain in my corner all the evening, saying little, overwhelmed with dread of the coming decisive moment. That tall, red-haired gentleman in glasses,—I simply detest him!
Roslawski sets to playing Wagner,—stiffly, correctly, like an automaton. His playing grates strongly upon my nerves: each of the notes taps on my heart-strings.
Obojanski is enchanted. He goes about the room on tiptoe, making the floor creak as he walks; he fetches music from the book-shelves for Roslawski, and lays them in heaps on the piano. Now and again he glances at me, and whispers, almost aloud: “How very beautiful!” He finally brings me a volume of some German encyclopædia, and opens it at the article “Wagner,” which he expects me to read.