“A whole catalogue of sins!” she laughed.
“Surely!” he continued, “and you are very good to bear me no malice.”
“Perhaps that is because I always hear so much that is good about you at Dolf’s.”
“Have you never noticed anything odd in Dolf?” he asked.
“No; what do you mean?”
“Has it never struck you that he has more of an eye for the great combinations of political questions than for the details of his own surroundings?”
She looked at him, smiling, astonished.
“Yes,” she said. “You are right. You know him well.”
“Oh, we have known one another from boyhood. It is curious; he never sees the things that lie close to his hand; he does not penetrate them. He is intellectually far-sighted.”
“Yes,” she assented.
“He does not know his wife, nor his daughters, nor Jules. He does not see what they have in them. He identifies each of them by means of a cypher fixed in his mind, which he forms out of the two most prominent traits of character, generally a little opposed. Mrs Van Attema seems to him to have a heart of gold, but to be not very practicaclass="underline" so much for her. Jules: a musical genius, but an untractable boy: settled.”
“Yes, he does not go very deeply into character,” she said. “For there is a great deal more in Amélie …”
“And he is quite at sea about Jules,” said Quaerts. “Jules is thoroughly tractable, and anything but a genius. Jules is nothing more than an exceedingly receptive boy, with a little rudimentary talent. And you … he misconceives you, too!”
“Me?”
“Entirely! Do you know what he thinks of you?”
“No.”
“He thinks you – let me begin by telling you this – very, very sympathetic, and a dear little mother to your boys. But he thinks also that you are incapable of growing very fond of anyone; he thinks you a woman without passion, and melancholy for no reason, except for weariness. He thinks you weary yourself!”
She looked at him quite alarmed, and saw him laughing mischievously.
“Never in my life am I weary!” she said, and laughed, too, with full conviction.
“Of course not!” he replied.
“How can you know?” she asked.
“I feel it!” he answered. “And, what is more, I know that the base of your character is not melancholy, not dark, but enthusiasm and light.”
“I am not so sure of that myself,” she scarcely murmured, heavy, with that weakness within her; happy, that he should estimate her so exactly. “And do you, too,” she continued, very airily, “think I am incapable of loving anyone very much?”
“Now that is a matter which I am not competent to judge,” he said, with such frankness that his whole countenance suddenly grew younger, and the crease disappeared from his forehead. “I cannot tell that!”
“You seem to know a great deal about me!”
“I have seen you so often already.”
“Barely four times.”
“That is often.”
She laughed brightly.
“Is that a compliment?”
“It is meant for one,” he replied. “You do not know how much it means to me to see you.”
How much it meant to him to see her! And she felt herself so small, so weak, and him so great, so perfect. With what decision he spoke, how certain he seemed of it all! It almost saddened her that it meant so much to him to see her a single time. He placed her too high; she did not wish to be placed so high.
And that delicate fragile something hung between them again, as it had hung between them at dinner. Then it had been broken by one ill-chosen word. Oh, that it might not be broken now!
“And now let us talk about you!” she said, with affected frivolousness. “Do you know that you take all sorts of pains to understand me, and that I know nothing of you? That cannot be fair.”
“If you knew how much I have given you already! I give myself to you entirely; from others I always conceal myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I am afraid of the others!”
“You afraid?”
“Yes. You think that I do not look as if I could feel afraid? I have something …”
He hesitated.
“Well?” she asked.
“I have something that is very dear to me, and about which I am very anxious, lest any should touch it.”
“And that is?”
“My soul. I am not afraid of your touching it, for you would not hurt it. On the contrary, I know it is very safe with you.”
She would have liked once more, mechanically, to reproach him with his strangeness: she could not. But he guessed her thoughts.
“You think me a very odd person, do you not? But how can I be otherwise with you?”
She felt her love expanding within her heart, widening it to its full capacity within her. Her love was as a domain, in which he wandered.
“I do not understand you yet; I do not know you yet!” she said softly. “I do not see you yet …”
“Would you be in any way interested to know me, to see me?”
“Surely.”
“Let me tell you then; I should like to do so, it would be a great joy to me.”
“I am listening to you most attentively.”
“One question beforehand: You cannot endure an athlete?”
“On the contrary, I do not mind the display and development of strength so long as it is not too near to me. Just as I like to hear a storm, when I am safely within doors. And I can look at acrobats with great pleasure.”
He laughed quietly.
“Nevertheless you held my particular predilection in great aversion?”
“Why should you think that?”
“I felt it.”
“You feel everything,” she said, almost in alarm. “You are a dangerous person.”
“So many think that. Shall I tell you why you took a special aversion in my case?”
“Yes.”
“Because you did not understand it in me; even though you may perhaps have observed that physical exercise is one of my strong passions.”
“I do not understand you at all.”
“I think you are right … But do not let me talk so much of myself; I prefer to talk of you.”
“And I of you. So be gallant to me for the first time in our acquaintance, and speak … of yourself.”
He bowed, with a smile.
“You will not think me tiresome?”
“Not at all. You were telling me of yourself. You were speaking of your love of exercise …”
“Ah! Yes … Can you understand that there are in me two distinct individuals?”
“Two distinct …”
“Yes. My soul, my real self; and then … there remains the other.”
“And what is that other?”
“Something ugly, something common, something grossly primitive. In one word, the brute.”
She shrugged her shoulders lightly.
“How dark you paint yourself. The same thing is more or less true of everybody.”
“Yes, but it troubles me more than I can tell you. I suffer; the lower hurts my soul, the higher, more than the whole world hurts it. Now do you know why I feel such a sense of security when I am with you? It is because I do not feel the brute that is in me … Let me go on a little longer, let me shrive myself; it does me good to tell you this. You thought I had only seen you four times? But I saw you often formerly, in the theatre, in the street, everywhere. There was always something strange for me when I saw you in the midst of accidental surroundings. And always, when I looked at you, I felt as if I were lifted to something more beautiful. I cannot express myself more clearly. There is something in your face, in your eyes, in your movements, I do not know what, but something better than in other people, something that addressed itself, most eloquendy, to my soul only. All this is so subtle and so strange … But you are no doubt thinking again that I am going too far, are you not? Or that I am raving?”