“And then, at last, I understood it all; and I thought (believe me, with the utmost sincerity): ‘Why, rather than this, has he not been drowned in the depths of the sea?’
“A mist came before my eyes: I rubbed them to see clear. Then a sudden pain clutched at my heart and made me writhe with torture. I fainted; when I came to, I was seized with fits of hysteria. In short, I made all the scenes that the typical ‘injured wife’ is wont to make.
“Then, at the time when George came, I was dangerously ill. Witold did not admit that he had done me wrong, nor did he come near me all the time. Later, he justified himself by saying that he could have been of no use, and was himself far too sensitive to bear the sight of suffering.
“Finally, when all danger was over, and Orcio was making the house ring with the noise he made, there was the same night over again; and he was again ‘a little flushed with wine,’ and ‘guilty of no offense’; again I was ‘his only love.’ And later, the same scene was repeated over and over, and at shorter intervals. And this day ... it is just as usual....
“And now I am looking into the very bottom of my soul. Have you ever seen it? An open coffin, in which there are no worms, there is no corruption. Only patches of colour, continually fading and changing and reviving, and forming lovely, lovely stars—just as in a kaleidoscope. And these hues glisten like the scales of a serpent which rolls and coils itself in ecstasy.”
A smile passed over her face. Then she gave a long shudder and closed her eyes fast.
Starting up on a sudden, she joined her hands behind her bare and shapely neck.
“If you knew, Janka,” she whispered, “if you only knew how I love him! If you knew how I am longing for him every moment when he is away! If you knew how fondly, how wildly, how madly I love the exceeding sweetness of his mouth!”
Madame Wildenhoff does not belong to the class of women that Martha was speaking of. I think that, were it not for her intrigue with Imszanski, even Martha herself might acknowledge her as a “complete woman.” One may, however, be a complete woman, and yet not a complete human being. We are not yet in the habit of distinguishing these two ideas, as we distinguish between “human being” and “man.” The part of a human being is one so seldom played by a woman—they have so few opportunities of doing so—that we expect their womanliness to comprise the whole of humanity. Nor do we realize how much we lower woman by such an expectation.
Now, as a woman, Madame Wildenhoff is complete, although her human nature cannot be said to be rich.