"You can"t deny it, my friend. Still, I can put up with it--your great, grand hate, for I know that there is a little drop of friendship mixed with it. We two--ah, my G.o.d!--we two really ought to be able to have splendid times together. We have outlived our love, and that is a delightful state of things--when one cares for a man and yet doesn"t want to love him."
She nestled herself in the cushions as if she were stretching limbs tired from the heat and burden of the day"s work, in the well-earned repose of a cool bed.
"I might even go so far, my friend, as to say," she continued, moistening the corners of her mouth with her tongue, "that the present relations between you and me are the most desirable that can exist between a man and a woman."
He laughed almost against his will. How comical she was in her irresponsible _navete_. Perhaps it wasn"t right to take her too seriously after all. One must listen to her patiently, as one listened to the chatter of a child and smiled.
"I am in earnest," she went on. "Thousands who have studied human nature have said that love is nothing but a sort of war. The woman dislikes the man"s desire, yet would dislike still more to forego it.
The man is enraged at the woman"s resistance, yet can"t endure her not to resist and give herself to him without a struggle. How stupid it all is! and how vulgar! Not till it is all over, not till nothing remains but the memory of a few dreamy hours of bliss----"
"And repentance," he interrupted gloomily.
She gave him a horrified look. "You are cruel," she whispered, twirling a bow of her dress round her forefinger.
"I only wish to remind you," he replied, "that all is not as it ought to be between us."
"As if I didn"t know it!" she sighed.
"You talk," he went on, "just as if we were heathens, artists, or Bohemians. That doesn"t do. We are made of different material. Our blood may be hot too, it is true. Opportunity may turn us into thieves before we know it, but we have always a skeleton in the cupboard in the shape of our infernal protestant conscience----"
"Don"t talk of conscience, I entreat you."
"And a certain residuum of what is called sense of duty."
"Ah! why embitter the first confidential hour we are pa.s.sing together?"
she murmured faintly.
"We have no confidential hours to pa.s.s together," he answered roughly.
She folded her hands. "My G.o.d, I know it, I know all. What I said just now was said to force my own conscience into trying to cheer you....
What good can come of filling each other"s ears with lamentations?"
He was silent. How everything was reversed since that morning on the island! She now defended the standpoint that he had then taken up, while he let himself be swayed by consciousness of sin as she had done then. A few minutes before he had feared nothing so much as to hear her lament, now he himself was driving her to it.
"You are right, Lizzie," he said, "we must quietly contain ourselves, and spare each other reproaches, for old sins can"t be undone. But the devil take us if we forget the object for which we have entered into this new alliance."
"How, in G.o.d"s name, could we forget it?" she cried, putting her hands before her face.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Now that their mutual purity of motive had been solemnly attested on both sides afresh, he need no longer be so much on his guard, and might without suspicion and self-reproach give himself up to the charm of this dreaded _tete-a-tete_.
And indeed it was not without its charm.
Here was a sympathetic echo to those thoughts which for months had tormented him, growing harder and more frequent day by day, bound up, as it were, with every experience, meeting, and memory, and yet remaining unspoken, so that their weight on his overburdened heart had been well-nigh unbearable. Out of this pair of blue swimming eyes his own guilt looked at him confidingly, softened and cleared by the woman"s grace. No harsh judgments blared from those soft lips, and when they whisperingly alluded to a sin which had better have remained unmentioned, they did so with a mild self-accusation that in itself was for him forgiveness. That was comforting--ay, it was comforting. He leaned back in his chair with a murmur of satisfaction, and asked if he might light a cigar.
"You know you may do anything you like," she replied, and rose to fetch him a tray and matches.
"Are you going to wait on me?" he exclaimed, springing up.
"Yes; let me. I like it, and you know it"s not the first time," she said, with her melancholy smile.
He watched her as she glided gracefully across the room in her pale-blue lounge-gown. The loose lace sleeves swept out from the upper part of the rounded arms and fell in transparent little folds against the corset, the stiff whalebone lines of which were visible through the thin dress, shooting upwards like rays into the full contour of her breast, where a satin bow gently vibrated. The figure, in its ripeness and soft outlines, seemed expressive of an exquisite repose, gained after pa.s.sion had burnt low and peace had been prayed and fought for.
There was nothing of the Magdalene in it, only her sad, always veiled eyes knew how to sing with the best effect the song of sweet sin and bitter repentance.
She sank into her seat again, and gazed out on the park, lost in dreams. The rapidly sinking sun flooded the room with a purple glow, and painted arabesques of gold upon the walls.
Leo, occupied with his cigar, let his eyes, follow the rings of smoke as they encroached on the sunlight"s domain and were transformed into clear flame-edged blue.
"You are a great deal alone now, I suppose?" he asked, by way of setting the conversation going again.
"Nearly always," she answered.
"What do you do with yourself, all day long?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you active in the housekeeping line?"
She pouted. "Yes; but it bores me."
"And--and ... visitors leave you in peace?"
She flushed to her neck. "What visitors?"
"You know ... the youths."
She smiled, apparently deeply ashamed. "Why do you remind me of that?"
she rebuked him. "I shudder when I think of the way in which only a short time ago I sought my pleasures. Oh, Leo, how different I feel, how much better and purer, since you came into my life again!"
"I can"t say the same for myself," he thought, remembering what he had gone through; but he felt flattered, nevertheless, at being recognised as a good angel.
"I cling to you," Felicitas went on, "with all the best instincts of my nature, for I know that you are the one person who can help me. And when I wrestle with my torture ..."
"Now she"s going to be tragic," he thought. But her tragedy was no longer so fatal as it had once seemed. If he could not echo her way of expressing things, he understood only too well the mood which prompted her so to express herself.
"And now I say," Felicitas continued, "all the evil spirits and goblins of h.e.l.l may attack me; I have got him, he is there; he will stand by me and not desert me, and so hope and peace have dawned in my soul once more."
She sighed, and, digging both her fists into the cushions, she sat there and gazed at him with parted lips, craving for succour, while her ma.s.s of fair curls fell about her ears like a confusion of writhing serpents.
"Of course," she continued, "I relied much on you. But when I wanted you most, you did not come. You went away. Oh, Leo, how cruel you have been to me! No, no! I won"t hurt you. You are good, good as an angel.
You have even forgiven me for forcing my way into Halewitz a second time. It"s true, isn"t it, you have forgiven me? And I have dared, too, to beard Johanna, to ameliorate her hate for you and me. Why, then, do you shun me? Why may I not call on you when it is all darkness and night within me, and the ghost of the slain----"
He trembled. The ghastly picture that the old pastor"s drunken phantasy had invoked rose before his mental vision.
"Does he haunt you too?" he murmured, between his clenched teeth.
"Don"t ask.... I must be silent.... It is better for you and for me not to speak of it.... Then how could you have borne to stay away from me, if you had known----"
"Known what?"