Cecile was very inquisitive about herself. How would she feel? At least interested; she could not disguise that from herself. She was certainly interested in him, remembering what Jules had said, what Amélie had said. She now felt that behind the mere sportsman there lurked another, whom she longed to know. Why? What concern was it of hers? She did not know; but in any case, as a matter of simple curiosity, it awoke her interest. At the same time she remained on her guard; she did not think his visit had been strictly in order, and there were stories in which the name of a married woman was coupled with his.
She succeeded in freeing herself from her conversation with the general, who seemed to feel himself called upon to entertain her, and it was she who first spoke to Taco Quaerts.
“Have you begun to give Jules his riding-lessons?” she asked with a smile.
He looked at her, evidently a little surprised at her voice and her smile, which were both new to him. He returned a bare answer:
“Yes, Mevrouw, we were at the riding school only yesterday …”
She thought him clumsy to let the conversation drop like that, but he inquired with that slight shyness which became a charm in him who was so manly:
“So you are going out again, Mevrouw?”
She thought – she had thought so before also – that his questions were such as were never asked. There was always something strange about them.
“Yes.” she replied simply, not knowing indeed what else to say.
“Pardon me …” he said seeing that his words embarrassed her, “I asked, because …”
“Because?” she repeated, surprised.
He took courage, and explained: “When Dolf spoke of you he always used to say that you lived quietly … Now I could never picture you to myself returned among society; I had formed an idea of you, and now it seems to me that idea was a mistaken one.”
“An idea?” she asked. “What idea?”
“Perhaps you will not be pleased when I tell you. Perhaps even as it is you are displeased with me”, he said nervously.
“I have not the slightest reason to be either pleased or displeased with you. But please tell me what was your idea …”
“You are interested in it?”
“If you will tell me candidly, yes. But you must be candid!” and she threatened him with her finger.
“Then …” he began, “I thought of you as a woman of culture, desirable as an acquaintance – I still think all that – and as a woman who cared nothing for the world beyond her own sphere; – and that … I can now think no longer. I should like to say, and risk your thinking me very strange, that I am sorry no longer to be able to think of you in that way. I would almost have preferred not to meet you here …”
He laughed, perhaps to soften what was strange in his words. She looked at him with amazement, her lips half-opened, and suddenly it struck her that for the first time she was looking into his eyes. She looked into his eyes, and saw that they were a dark, dark grey around the black of the pupil. There was something in his eyes, she could not say what, but something magnetic, as if she could never again take away her own from them.
“How strange you can be sometimes!” she said, the words coming intuitively.
“Oh, I beg you, please do not be angry,” he almost implored her. “I was so glad when you spoke kindly to me. You were a little distant to me when last I saw you, and I should be so sorry if I angered you. Perhaps I am strange, but how could I possibly be commonplace with you? How could I possibly, even if you were to take offence? … Have you taken offence?”
“I ought to, but I suppose I must forgive you, if only for your candour!” she said, laughing. “Otherwise your remarks are anything but gallant.”
“And yet I intended no unmannerliness.”
“I suppose not.”
She remembered that she was at a big dinner-party. The guests ranged before and around her; the footmen waiting behind; the light of the candles sparkling on the silver and touching the glass with all the hues of the rainbow; on the table prone mirrors like sheets of water, surrounded by flowers, little lakes amidst moss-roses and lilies of the valley.
She sat silent a moment, still smiling, looking at her hand, a pretty hand, like a white precious thing upon the tulle of her gown; one of the fingers bore several rings, scintillating sparks of blue and white.
The general turned to her again; they exchanged a few words; the general was delighted that Mrs Van Even’s right-hand neighbour kept her entertained, and so enabled him to get on with his dinner. Quaerts turned to the lady on his right.
Both were pleased when they were able to resume their conversation.
“What were we talking about just now?” she asked.
“I know!” he replied mischievously.
“The general interrupted us …”
“You were not angry with me!”
“Oh yes,” she replied, laughing softly. “It was about your idea of me, was it not? Why could you no longer conceive me returned to society?”
“I thought you had grown a person apart.”
“But why?”
“From what Dolf said, from what I thought myself, when I saw you.”
“And why are you sorry now that I am not ‘a person apart’?” she asked, still laughing.
“From vanity: because I have made a mistake. And yet, perhaps I have not made a mistake …”
They looked at one another, and both, whatever else they might have been thinking, now thought the same thing: namely, that they must be careful with their words, because they were speaking of something very delicate and tender, something as frail as a soap-bubble, which could easily break if they spoke of it too loudly, the mere breath of their words might be sufficient. Yet she ventured to ask:
“And why do you believe that you are not mistaken?”
“I don’t quite know. Perhaps because I wish it so. Perhaps, too, because it is so true as to leave no room for doubt. Ah, yes, I am almost sure that I had judged rightly. Do you know why? Because otherwise I should have hidden myself and been matter-of-fact, and I find this impossible with you. I have given you more of my very self in this short moment than I have given people whom I have known for years in the course of all those years. Therefore, surely you must be a person apart.”
“What do you mean by ‘a person apart’?”
He smiled, he opened his eyes, she looked into them again, deeply into them.
“You understand quite well what I mean,” he said.
Fear for the delicate thing that might break came between them again. They understood one another as with a freemasonry of comprehension. Her eyes were magnetically held upon his.
“You are very strange!” she said again, automatically.
“No,” he said calmly, shaking his head, his eyes upon hers. “I am certain that I am not strange to you, although at this moment you may think so.”
She was silent.
“I am so glad to be able to talk to you like this!” he whispered. “It makes me very happy. And see, no one knows anything of it. We are at a big dinner: the people next to us catch our words: yet there is no one among them understands us, or grasps the subject of our conversation. Do you know the reason for this?”
“No,” she murmured.
“I will tell you; at least I think it is this: perhaps you know better, for you must know things better than I, you being so much subtler. I personally believe that each person has an environment about him, an atmosphere, and that he meets other people who have environments or atmospheres about them, sympathetic or antipathetic to his own.”