“That is pure mysticism!” she said.
“No,” Quaerts replied; “it is all very simple. When the two circles are antipathetic, each repels the other; but when they are sympathetic, then they glide one over the other with smaller or larger folds of sympathy. In rarer cases the circles almost coincide, but they always remain separate … Do you really think this so mystical?”
“One might call it the mysticism of sentiment. But I thought something of the sort myself …”
“Yes, yes, I can understand that,” he continued, calmly, as if he expected it. “I believe those around us could not understand what we are saying, because we two alone have sympathetic environments. But my atmosphere is of grosser texture than your own, which is very delicate.”
She was silent again, remembering her aversion to him – did she still feel that?
“What do you think of my theory?” he asked.
She looked up; her white fingers trembled in the tulle of her gown. She made a poor effort to smile.
“I think you go too far!” she stammered.
“You think I rush into hyperbole?”
She would have liked to say yes, but could not.
“No,” she said; “not that.”
“Am I wearying you? …”
She looked at him; deep into his eyes. She made a gesture to say no. She would have liked to say that he was too unconventional; but she could not find words. A drowsiness oppressed her whole being. The table, the people, the whole dinner seemed to her as through a haze of light. When she recovered she saw that a pretty woman sitting opposite, who now looked another way out of politeness, was gazing at her steadfastly. She did not know why this interested her, but she asked Quaerts: “Who is that lady over there, in pale blue, with dark hair?”
She saw that he started.
“That is young Mrs Hijdrecht,” he said calmly, his voice a little raised.
She turned pale; her fan flapped nervously to and fro. He had named the woman rumour said to be his mistress.
III
It seemed to Cecile as though that delicate, frail thing, that soap-bubble, had burst. She wondered if he had spoken to that dark-haired woman also of circles of sympathy. So soon as she was able, Cecile observed Mrs Hijdrecht. She had a warm, dull-gold complexion, fiery dark eyes, a mouth as of fresh blood. Her dress was cut very low; her throat and the slope of her breast came out insolently handsome, brutally luscious. A row of diamonds encircled her neck with a narrow line of white brilliancy. Cecile felt ill at ease. She looked away from the young woman, and turned to Quaerts, drawn magnetically towards him. She saw a cloud of melancholy stealing over the upper half of his face; over his forehead and his eyes, in which appeared a slight look of age. And she heard him say:
“What do you care about that lady’s name; we were just in the middle of such a charming conversation …”
She too felt sad now; sad for the soap-bubble that had burst. She did not know why, but she felt pity for him; sudden, deep, spontaneous pity.
“We can resume our conversation,” she said softly.
“Do not let us take it up where we left it,” he rejoined with feigned airiness. “I had become too serious.”
He spoke of other things: she answered little, and their conversation languished. They each occupied themselves with their neighbours. The dinner came to an end. Mrs Hoze rose and took the arm of the gentleman next her. The general escorted Cecile to the drawing-room, in the slow procession of the others.
The ladies remained alone, the men went to the smoking-room with young Hoze. Cecile saw Mrs Hoze coming towards her. She asked her if she had not been wearied at dinner; they sat down by one another, in a confidential tête-à-tête.
Cecile compelled herself to reply to Mrs Hoze, but she would gladly have gone elsewhere, to weep quietly, because everything passed so quickly, because the speck of the present was so small. Past, again, was the sweet charm of their conversation at dinner about sympathy, a fragile intimacy amid the worldly splendours about them. Past that moment, never, never to return: life sped over it with its onflowing, a flood of all-obliterating water. Oh, the sorrow of it; to think how quickly, like an intangible perfume, everything speeds away, everything that is dear to us …
Mrs Hoze left her; Suzette Van Attema came to talk to Cecile. She was in pink, and shining in all her aspect as if gold dust had rained over her, upon her movements, her eyes, her words. She spoke volubly to Cecile, telling interminable tales, to which Cecile did not always listen. Suddenly, through Suzette’s prattling, Cecile heard the voices of two women whispering behind her; she only caught a word here and there:
“Emilie Hijdrecht, you know …”
“Only gossip, I think; Mrs Hoze does not seem to heed it …”
“Ah! I am afraid I know better.”
The voices were lost in the hum of others. Cecile caught a sound just like Quaerts’ name. Suzette asked suddenly:
“Do you know young Mrs Hijdrecht, Auntie?”
“No.”
“Over there, with the diamonds. You know, they talk about her and Quaerts. Mamma does not believe it. He is a great flirt. You sat next to him, did you not?”
Cecile suffered severely in the secrecy of her sensitiveness. She shrank entirely within herself, doing all she could to appear different from what she was. Suzette saw nothing of her discomfiture.
The men returned. Cecile looked to see whether Quaerts would speak to Mrs Hijdrecht. But he wholly ignored her presence, and even, when he saw Suzette sitting with Cecile, came over to them to pay a compliment to Suzette, to whom he had not yet spoken.
It was a relief for Cecile when she was able to go. She longed for solitude, to recover herself, to return from her abstraction. In her brougham she scarcely dared breathe, fearful of something, she could not say what. When she reached home she felt a stifling heaviness which seemed to paralyse her, and with difficulty she passed up the stairway to her dressing-room.
And yet, as she stepped, there fell over her, as from the roof of her house, a haze of protecting safety. Slowly she went up, her hand, holding a long glove, pressing the velvet banister of the stairway. She felt as if she were about to swoon.
“But, my God … I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!” she whispered between her trembling lips, with sudden amazement.
It was as in a rhythm of astonishment that she wearily mounted the stairway, higher and higher, in a still surprise of sudden light.
“But I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!”
It sounded like a melody through her weariness.
She reached her dressing-room, where Greta had lighted the gas; she dragged herself inside. The door of the nursery stood half open; she entered it and threw up the curtain of Christie’s little bed. She fell on her knees, and looked at the child. The boy partly awoke, still in the warmth of a deep sleep; he crept a little from between the sheets, laughed and threw his arms about Cecile’s bare neck.
“Mamma dear!”
She pressed him tightly in the embrace of her slender white arms; she kissed his raspberry mouth, his drowsy eyes. Meantime the refrain sang on in her heart, right across the weariness, which broke, as it were, by the cot of her child: “I am fond of him, I love him, I love him, I love him …!”
IV
The mystery! Suddenly, on the staircase, it had beamed open before her in her soul, like a great flower of light, a mystic rose with glistening leaves, into whose golden heart she now looked for the first time. The analysis of which she was so fond was no longer possible: this was the Enigma of Love, the eternal Enigma, that had beamed open within her, transfixing with its rays the width and breadth of her soul, in the midst of which it had burst forth like a sun in the universe; it was no longer of use to ask, why, why. It was no longer of use to ponder and dream on it; it could only be accepted as the inexplicable phenomenon of the soul; it was a creation of sentiment, of which the god who created it would be as impossible to find in the essence of his reality as the God who had created the world out of chaos. It was the light breaking forth from the darkness; it was heaven disclosed above the earth. It existed, it was reality and no chimera; for it was wholly and entirely within her; a sudden, incontestable, everlasting truth, a felt fact, so real in its ethereal incorporeity that it seemed to her as if before that moment she had never known, never thought, never felt.