“Are you content to be so?”
“Can you be so ignorant about women not to know how in each one of us there is a longing to solace and relief, to play, in fact, at being a madonna?”
“Do not speak so,” he said, with pain in his voice.
“I am speaking seriously …”
He looked at her; a doubt rose within him, but she smiled to him; a calm glory was about her; she sat amidst the bouquets of the rhododendrons as in the heart of one great mystic flower. The wound of his doubt was soothed with balsam. He gave himself up wholly to his happiness; an atmosphere wafted about them of the sweet calm of life, an atmosphere in which life becomes dispassionate and restful and smiling, like the air which is rare about the gods. It began to grow dark; a violet gloom fell from the sky like crêpe falling upon crêpe; quietly the stars lighted out. The shadows in the garden, between the shrubs among which they sat, flowed into one another; the piano in the adjacent villa had stopped. And Happiness drew a veil between his soul and the outside world: the garden with its design of plots and paths; the villa with curtains at its windows, and its iron gate; the road behind, with the rattle of carriages and trams. All this withdrew itself far back; all ordinary life retreated far from him; vanishing behind the veil, it died away. It was no dream nor conceit: reality to him was the Happiness that had come while the world died away; the Happiness that was rare, invisible, intangible, coming from the Love which alone is sympathy, calm and without passion, the Love which exists purely of itself, without further thought either of taking anything, or even of giving anything, the love of the gods, that is the soul of Love itself.
High he felt himself: the like of the illusion he had of her, which she wished to maintain for his sake, of which he was now absolutely certain, doubting nothing. For he could not understand that what had given him happiness – his illusion – so perfect, so crystalline, could cause her any grief; he could not at this moment penetrate without sin into the truth of the law which insists on equilibrium, which takes away from one what it offers another, which gives Happiness and Grief together; he could not understand that if Happiness was with him, with her there was anguish, anguish that she must make a pretence and deceive him for his own sake: anguish that she wanted above all what was earthly, that she craved for what was earthly, panted for earthly pleasures …! Still less could he know that, through all this, there was voluptuousness in her anguish: that to suffer through him, to suffer for him, made of her anguish all voluptuousness.
II
It was dark and late, and still they sat there.
“Shall we go for a walk?” she asked.
He hesitated, but she asked anew, “Why not, if you care to?”
And he could no longer refuse.
They rose up, and went along by the back of the house; Cecile said to the maid, whom she saw sitting sewing by the kitchen door:
“Greta, fetch me my small black hat, my black lace shawl, and a pair of gloves.”
The servant rose and went into the house. Cecile noticed how a little shyness marked itself more strongly in Quaerts’ hesitation now that they were waiting between the flower beds. She smiled, plucked a rose, and placed it in her waistband.
“Have the boys gone to bed?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, still smiling, “long ago.”
The servant returned; Cecile put on the small black hat and the lace about her neck; she refused the gloves Greta offered her.
“No, not these; get me a pair of grey ones …”
The servant entered the house again, and as Cecile looked at Quaerts, she gave a little laugh.
“What is the matter?” she asked, mischievously, knowing perfectly what it was.
“Nothing, nothing!” he said, vaguely, and waited patiently until Greta returned.
Then they went through the garden gate into the woods. They walked slowly, without speaking; Cecile played with her long gloves, not putting them on.
“Really …” he began, hesitating.
“Come, what is it?”
“You know; I told you the other day; it isn’t right …”
“What?”
“What we are doing now. You risk too much.”
“Too much, with you?”
“If anyone were to see us …”
“And what then?”
He shook his head.
“You are wilful; you know very well.”
She clenched her eyes; her mouth grew serious; she pretended to be a little angry.
“Listen, you must not be anxious if I am not. I am doing no harm. Our walks are not secret; Greta at least knows about them. And, besides, I am free to do as I please.”
“It is my fault; the first time we went for a walk in the evening it was at my request”
“Then do penance and be good; come now, without scruple, at my request …” she said, with mock emphasis.
He yielded, too happy to wish to make any sacrifice to a convention which at that moment did not exist for either of them.
They walked silently. Cecile’s sensations came to her always in shocks of surprise. So it had been when Jules had grown suddenly angry with her; so also, midway on the stair, after that conversation at dinner of circles of sympathy. And now, precisely in the same way, with the shock of sudden revelation, came this new sensation – that after all she did not suffer so seriously as she had at first thought; that her agony, being voluptuousness, could not be a martyrdom; that she was happy, that Happiness had come about her in the fine air of his atmosphere, because they were together, together …
Oh, why wish for anything more, above all for things less pure? Did he not love her, and was not his love already a fact, and was it not on a sufficiently low plane now that it was an absolute fact? Did he not love her with a tenderness which feared for anything which might trouble her in the world, through her ignoring it and wandering with him alone in the dark? Did he not love her with tenderness, but also with the lustre of the divinity of his soul, calling her madonna, by this title making her – unconsciously, perhaps, in his simplicity – the equal of all that was divine in him?
Did he not love her, did he not? Why did she want more? No, no, she wanted nothing more; she was happy, she shared Happiness with him; he gave it her just as she gave it him; it was a sphere that progressed with them, as they walked together, seeking their way along the dark paths of the woods, she leaning on his arm, he leading her, for she could see nothing in the dark; which yet was not dark, but pure light of their Happiness. And so it was as if it was not evening, but day, noon; noon in the night, hour of bright light in the dusk!
III
And the darkness was light; the night dawned into Light which beamed on every side. Calmly it beamed, the Light, like one solitary sunstar, beaming with the soft lustre of purity, bright in a heaven of still, white, silver air; a heaven where they walked along milky ways of light and music; it beamed and sounded beneath their feet; it welled in seas of ether high above their heads, and beamed and sounded there, high and clear. And they were alone in their heaven, in their infinite heaven, which was all space, endless beneath them and above and around them, endless spaces of light and music, of light that was music. Their heaven measured itself on every side with blessed perspectives of white radiance, fading away in lustre and swooning landscape; oases of flowers and plants by watersides of light, still and clear and hush with peace. For its peace was the ether in which all desire is dissolved and becomes of crystal, and their life in it was the limpid existence in unruffled peace; they walked on, in heavenly sympathy of fellowship, close together, hemmed in one narrow circle, one circle of radiance which embraced them. Barely was there a recollection in them of the world which had died out in the glitter of their heaven; there was nothing in them but the ecstasy of their love, which had become their soul, as if they no longer had any soul, were only love; and when they looked about them and upon the Light, they saw that their heaven, in which their Happiness was the Light, was nothing but their love; and that the landscapes – the flowers and plants by watersides of light – were nothing but their love, and that the endless space, the eternities of lustre and music, measuring themselves out on every hand, beneath them and above and around them, were nothing but their love, which had grown into heaven and happiness.